MiffQ  Book, 
of  friends 


SANTA  CRUZ 


A  LITTLE  BOOK  OF  FRIENDS 


fig  tjje  Same 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS 
HESTER   STANLEY'S    FRIENDS 

IN  TITIAN'S    GARDEN   AND    OTHER 
POEMS 


A  LITTLE   BOOK  OF 
FRIENDS 


BY 


HARRIET  PRESCOTT  SPOFFORD 


BOSTON 

LITTLE,   BROWN,  AND  COMPANY 
1916 


Copyright,  1916, 
BY  LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND  COMPANY. 


All  rights  reserved 
Published,  September,  1916 


Nortoooft 

Set  up  and  electrotyped  by  J.  S.  Gushing  Co.,  Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A 
Presswork  by  S.  J.  Parkhill  &  Co.,  Boston,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


\5) 


What  are  friends  for,  but  to  divine 
Fairest  and  finest  that  we  are, 
And  think  in  all  our  glances  shine 
The  morning  and  the  evening  star  ! 


ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

THANKS  are  due  the  Houghton  Mifflin 
Company  for  permission  to  make  quota- 
tion from  the  works  of  Annie  Fields, 
Sarah  Orne  Jewett,  and  Celia  Thaxter; 
and  to  the  executors  of  the  estate  of 
Anne  Whitney  for  a  similar  permission. 
Also  to  the  publishers  of  McClure's 
Magazine. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PA.GB 

I  ANNIE  FIELDS  ...        .        .  1 

II  SARAH  ORNE  JEWETT       ...  21 

III  ANNE  WHITNEY        .        .        .        .  43 

IV  CELIA  THAXTER       »        .        .        .  67 
V  GAIL  HAMILTON        ....  87 

VI    MARY  LOUISE  BOOTH       .        .  .117 
VII    JANE  ANDREWS 

LOUISA  STONE  HOPKINS  .        .  .     131 

VIII    ROSE  TERRY  COOKE         .        .  .143 

IX    LOUISE  CHANDLER  MOULTON  .  .157 


A  LITTLE  BOOK  OF 
FRIENDS 

I 

ANNIE  FIELDS 

WHEN  I  first  saw  Annie  Fields,  she 
had  come  with  Mr.  Fields  to  take  me 
on  a  long  drive,  and  she  was  a  vision 
of  youth  and  beauty,  —  with  the  peach 
bloom  on  her  lovely  cheek,  the  gleam 
in  her  brown  eyes,  with  a  luxuriance 
of  jacinth-colored  hair  whose  innumer- 
able dark  waves  broke  full  of  glancing 
golden  lights,  —  of  exceeding  feminine 
grace  withal,  a  tall,  regnant  young  being, 
as  she  stood  at  the  end  of  our  drive,  in  her 
blue  gown  against  the  blue  sea.  When  I 
last  saw  her,  she  had  again  come  to  take 


2  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

me  to  drive,  no  longer  in  the  high  estate 
of  the  young  queen,  but  with  a  coun- 
tenance as  .beautiful  in  its  pallor,  the 
eyes  as  brown  and  soft,  the  outlines  as 
firm,  the  hair  still  carrying  its  glints  of 
gold  under  its  slight  powdering,  the 
teeth  still  pearly  white  and  transparent, 
the  smile  as  irradiating,  the  grace  of 
movement  as  perfect,  but  all  silvered 
with  the  frost  of  age. 

Annie  Fields  was  born  in  Boston,  in 
one  of  those  houses  with  deep  gardens 
long  since  lost  in  the  business  centers. 
Her  father  was  Doctor  Adams,  an  emi- 
nent physician.  She  was  married,  when 
very  young,  to  Mr.  James  T.  Fields, 
a  remarkable  publisher  and  man  of  let- 
ters, a  person  of  great  wit  and  gracious- 
ness.  After  a  little  they  went  abroad, 
and  at  the  time  they  came  for  me,  they 
had  just  returned  from  a  long  European 
stay,  where  Mrs.  Fields 's  advantages  were 
those  which  few  young  girls  have  ever 
received.  Her  husband  had  taken  her 


ANNIE   FIELDS  3 

among  the  friends  he  had  already  made ; 
she  had  visited  at  Tennyson's,  in  the 
Isle  of  Wight,  had  been  intimate  with  the 
Brownings,  in  Florence,  had  walked  in 
Landor's  garden  there  by  the  old  poet's 
side,  had  had  the  rapture  and  regret  of 
Rome,  with  Charlotte  Cushman  and 
William  Story  —  where  even  the  people 
of  the  street  called  her  La  Bella  Donna 
—  had  had  the  best  of  London,  and  much 
of  the  finest  and  the  richest  that  Europe 
had  to  give. 

Returning  to  Boston,  her  beautiful 
home  on  Charles  Street,  —  with  its  garden 
running  down  to  the  river,  with  its  wide 
view  over  miles  of  water  to  the  distant 
hills,  with  its  vast  and  lovely  library, 
lined  with  books  and  pictures  and  busts 
of  unique  attraction,  —  became  the  haunt 
of  our  chief  poets,  wits,  and  writers, 
players  and  workers,  —  Lowell  and  Long- 
fellow and  Holmes  and  Emerson  and 
Agassiz  and  Felton  and  Whipple,  to 
number  no  more,  being  its  familiars. 


4  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

There  also  came  every  one  of  significance 
from  abroad,  to  be  received  with  the  de- 
lightful bonhomie  and  boundless  hospi- 
tality of  the  host,  with  the  bright  and 
fine  bearing  of  the  hostess,  to  rest  in 
the  soft  green  shadows  by  the  low  fire 
and  among  the  abundant  flowers.  The 
power  of  such  association  on  a  young, 
tender,  and  sensitive  spirit,  overflowing 
with  poetry  and  the  love  of  beauty, 
could  not  but  be  enriching  and  stimulat- 
ing, and  she  was  every  day  and  all  the 
time  in  the  company  of  the  clear  intellect 
and  sweet  nature  of  a  man  to  whom 
such  as  Wordsworth  and  Christopher 
North  and  De  Quincey  and  Rogers  and 
Barry  Cornwall  and  Leigh  Hunt  and 
Tennyson  and  Thackeray  and  Dickens 
and  Charles  Reade  and  Keats's  Severn 
and  Doctor  John  Brown  and  others,  a 
shining  host,  indeed,  overseas  as  well  as  in 
our  own  land,  had  given  their  friendship. 
In  her  memoir  of  her  husband,  written 
when  she  could  command  her  powers 


ANNIE   FIELDS 


after  he  had  gone  and  taken  half  of  her 
life  with  him  into  the  unseen,  she  por- 
trayed the  strength  and  fineness,  the  rare 
quality,  the  rich  experiences,  of  Mr. 
Fields,  to  live  with  whom  was  itself  an 
enlightening  and  ennobling  fortune.  He 
cared  tenderly  for  her  genius,  which  he 
early  discovered,  and  together  they  made 
their  home  a  place  of  delight.  Your 
eye  never  failed  to  be  met  there  by  some 
new  treasure  of  a  separate  fascination, 
now  a  bust  of  Charlotte  Cushman  by 
Emma  Stebbins,  her  other  self;  now  a 
charcoal  sketch  of  William  Hunt's,  now 
a  Zamacois,  flaming  with  barbaric  color 
and  fantastic  thought,  now  an  old  portrait 
of  Pope,  painted  by  the  master  of  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds,  now  a  volume  of  Pope, 
owned  once  by  Mr.  Lincoln,  now  a  price- 
less edition  of  Blake,  now  a  boyish  and 
beautiful  portrait  of  Dickens,  with  prints 
and  photographs  and  autographs  and 
letters  and  literary  curiosities  without 
number,  to  be  found  nowhere  else  in  the 


6  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

world  but  in  that  house.  What  its 
bookshelves  held,  Mrs.  Fields  herself 
made  partly  apparent  in  her  interesting 
papers  about  them. 

And  never  did  one  home  receive  such 
guests.  Perhaps  the  room  you  occupied 
Ole  Bull  had  slept  in  the  night  before 
you  came,  and  Hawthorne  would  sleep 
in  the  night  after  you  went ;  and  both  of 
them  had  watched  the  stars  and  twinkling 
lights  in  the  purple  waters  of  the  bay, 
as  you  had  done.  Perhaps  Whittier  or 
Bayard  Taylor  was  across  the  hall. 
You  went  out  of  the  door  as  Mr.  Curtis 
or  William  Hunt  or  Colonel  Higginson 
came  in,  as  Sothern  or  Fechter  or 
Artemus  Ward  went  out  before  you.  It 
was  Clara  Kellogg  or  Christine  Nillson 
or  Celia  Thaxter  or  Rebecca  Harding  or 
Mrs.  Stowe,  that  you  found  your  vis-a- 
vis at  breakfast  or  at  dinner.  Every- 
thing in  the  house  moved  in  such  respon- 
sive harmony  under  the  hand  of  its 
young  mistress  and  her  exquisite  and 


ANNIE    FIELDS 


sensitive  refinement,  that  it  was  always 
the  house  beautiful.  Here  you  heard 
the  latest  word  from  the  world  of  books 
and  book-men,  and  caught  the  first 
glimmer  of  the  phantoms  of  new  in- 
dividualities, and  indeed  the  last  from 
those  great  shadows  sinking  below  our 
horizon.  Some  shadows  seemed  to  come 
very  near,  as  when  Mr.  Fields  recounted 
Kenyon's  tale  that,  while  stopping  at  a 
mountain  inn,  he  saw  the  diligence  drive 
up,  and  a  pale  young  man  spring  down 
from  it,  and  another  pale  young  man  run 
out  from  the  inn  to  meet  the  first  one, 
throwing  his  arms  about  him  and  kissing 
him  on  both  cheeks ;  and  one  pale  young 
man  was  Byron,  and  the  other  pale  young 
man  was  Shelley.  You  felt  that  you 
had  almost  touched  them  with  your  hand, 
and  remembered  Browning  and  the  eagle's 
feather. 

Annie  Fields  gave  the  first  public 
evidence  of  her  literary  power  in  the  Ode 
that  she  wrote  to  be  read  by  Charlotte 


8  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

Cushman  on  the  occasion  of  the  unveiling 
of  the  great  organ  in  the  Music  Hall  of 
Boston,  which  was  quite  a  splendid  cere- 
monial. The  Ode  was  a  fine,  fresh  piece  of 
work,  spontaneous  and  full,  with  pleasant 
pictures,  and  little  rills  of  music  and 
widening  effects  of  noble,  rolling  lines.  It 
was  some  years  before  she  printed  pri- 
vately—  for  her  work  has  been  marked 
by  a  shrinking  modesty  —  the  "Return 
of  Persephone",  a  touching  and  beautiful 
version  of  the  old  myth,  marked  here  by 
clarity  and  pure  delightfulness,  and  there 
by  grandeur  of  thought  and  expression, 
its  atmosphere  and  phrase  reminding  one 
constantly  of  Shelley's,  although  borrow- 
ing nothing  from  him.  Its  third  act  rises 
to  sublimity,  with  passages  of  the  presci- 
ence which  belongs  only  to  genius.  There 
is  many  a  burst  of  music  in  it.  How  ten- 
der and  dainty  is  this  little  cradle  song : 

"  Coo,  coo,  coo,  chanteth  the  mother  of  doves  ! 
Rocked  in  the  arms  of  the  trees  the  drowsy 
birds  are  asleep, 


ANNIE   FIELDS  9 

Rocked  in  the  arms  of  thy  mother,  who  ever  a 

watch  doth  keep, 
Coo,  coo,  my  baby,  sweetest  of  all  the  loves  ! " 

But  neither  poetry  nor  the  duties  and 
delights  of  her  home  could  absorb  all 
the  thought  and  time  of  this  full-hearted 
creature.  Early  in  her  life  the  woes  of 
the  outer  world  took  possession  of  her, 
in  the  midst  of  her  own  shelter  from 
every  wind  that  blew,  basking  in  the 
receipt  of  love  and  worship.  She  was 
always  sending  comfort  to  those  sitting 
in  darkness ;  and  the  words  that  De- 
meter  spoke  to  her  Persephone  were  the 
keynote  of  her  life : 

"  But  as  thou  goest  pluck  blossoms  from  thy  path 
And  strew  them  in  the  places  without  bloom." 

Her  work  in  the  charities  of  Boston 
extended  through  more  than  a  quarter  of  a 
century  of  devotion  to  those  in  need,  and 
a  valuable  little  book  which  she  wrote 
upon  the  best  ways  of  affording  help  to 
the  poor  has  become  a  manual  upon  the 
subject. 


10  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

In  1881  she  published  a  volume  of 
verses,  "Under  the  Olive",  that  might 
fitly  be  called  poems  for  poets,  to  be 
read  with  the  poetic  insight  and  con- 
fidence. All  the  poems  in  the  book  were 
built  upon  lofty  lines.  The  Greek  legend 
had  attracted  her  strongly;  often  she 
treated  it  in  the  severe  Greek  spirit,  and 
then  again  with  wealth  of  modern  feeling 
and  color.  Every  myth  and  story  is  in- 
terpenetrated with  new  meaning ;  some- 
times one  feels  an  elusive  charm,  as  if  a 
thought  of  ethereal  loveliness  were  just 
escaping ;  and  every  page  has  a  calmness 
of  expression  where  is  never  any  struggle 
for  effect,  and  which  seems  in  such 
sympathy  with  the  ordered  ways  of 
beauty  that  startling  line  or  figure  would 
break  the  spell.  Meanwhile,  the  felicities 
of  description  are  many,  as  when  she 
speaks  of  the  "Briny  perfumes  of  the 
Eastern  gale",  or  notes  the  waning  moon, 

"  Hanging,  a  fragment  of  mist,  faint  on  the  fore- 
head of  day," 


ANNIE   FIELDS  11 

or  tells  how  the  old  ^Eschylus 

"Gathered  up  life's  embers,  laid  thereto  the  fires 
of  slow  experience." 

or  how  one 

"Beheld  like  a  blossom 

Dawn  lying  rosy  and  soft  rocked  on  the  breast 
of  the  sea." 

or  gives   some  such  rare  description  as 
Hero  gives  of  the  life  in  her  tower : 

"Music  is  none  for  me  if  no  voice  of  the  sea-bird 

be  calling, 
Dance  there  is  none  but  the  dance  led  by  the 

waves  on  the  strand, 
High  is  my  chamber  and  silent,  the  pathway 

unknown  unto  any, 
Save  to  the  jewels  of  air  borne  on  the  pinions  of 

flame, 
Flitting  and  stirring  with  kisses  the  jars  of  alys- 

sum  and  lilies 
Bowering  my  casement  and  breathing  of  valleys 

and  rills." 

One  is  aware,  all  through  the  book,  of 
the  delicacy  and  fineness  of  womanly 
touch  and  intuition,  of  a  feminine  ex- 
pression which  is  as  full  of  strength  as  of 


12  A   LITTLE   BOOK  OF  FRIENDS 

sweetness,  and  one  cannot  read  "Antin- 
ous",  or  "Achilles",  or  "Helena",  with- 
out recognizing  genius.  After  their  pub- 
lication, she  printed,  in  the  leading 
magazines,  a  sufficient  number  to  make 
a  second  volume,  but  in  her  carelessness 
of  what  is  called  fame,  they  remained 
uncollected  till  1895,  when  she  published 
"The  Singing  Shepherd."  The  initial 
poem  in  this  volume  is  one  of  exquisite 
beauty  and  tender  feeling,  and  very  many 
of  the  others  have  a  personal  application, 
reflecting  her  moods,  her  joys,  her  sorrows. 
What  is  there  lovelier  than  these  stanzas 
from  "A  Green  Nook." 

"The  light  slips  down  from  other  skies 
And  mingles  with  the  blue  of  this, 
I  hear  another  music  through 
The  sparrow's  bliss. 

"The  light  of  an  unfading  love 

Paints  the  gay  grass  and  frames  the  sky, 
And  hides  the  moon  in  mornings  seas 
And  cannot  die." 

It  is  as  if  with  all  her  subtle  melody 
and  great  intention  and  swift  penetra- 


ANNIE   FIELDS  13 

tion  to  the  inmost  meaning  of  words, 
she  sang  for  the  sweet  sake  of  singing. 
Yet  her  work  was  the  work  of  an  artist ; 
and  the  scope  of  her  effort  was  wide  —  she 
infused  humanity  and  to-day  into  the 
thoughts  and  fancies  of  a  dead  world,  and 
made  old  legends  live  with  new  life  in 
an  atmosphere  as  high  as  joy,  as  deep 
as  sorrow.  The  sweet  seriousness,  the 
gracious  earnestness  of  her  verse,  were 
never  felt  so  well  as  when  in  some  seldom 
moment  she  read  to  you,  in  a  voice  like 
the  voice  of  the  dove  her  Demeter  sang 
about,  or  like  the  double  flute,  you  think, 
that  one  of  her  own  Greek  girls  might 
be  breathing  through.  Her  imaginative 
sympathy  is  delightfully  seen  in  such  verses 
as  "On  a  Wharf",  when  she  pictures  vari- 
ous great  sailings,  her  strong  religious 
spirit  in  "The  Comforter",  and  perhaps 
her  personality  is  best  seen  in  the  verses, 
"  On  Waking  from  a  Dreamless  Sleep"  : 

"I  waked ;  the  sun  was  in  the  sky. 
The  face  of  heaven  was  fair ; 


14  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

The  silence  all  about  me  lay 
Of  morning  in  the  air. 

"I  said,  Where  hast  thou  been,  my  soul, 

Since  the  moon  set  in  the  west  ? 
I  know  not  where  thy  feet  have  trod, 
Nor  what  has  been  thy  quest. 

"Where  wast  thou  when  Orion  passed 

Below  the  dark-blue  sea  ? 
His  glittering,  silent  stars  are  gone,  — 
Didst  follow  them  for  me  ? 

"Where  wast  thou  in  that  awful  hour 

When  first  the  night- wind  heard 
The  faint  breath  of  the  coming  dawn 
And  fled  before  the  word  ? 

"Where  hast  thou  been,  my  spirit, 

Since  the  long  wave  on  the  shore 
Tenderly  rocked  my  soul  to  sleep 
And  I  heard  thee  no  more  ? 

"My  limbs  like  breathing  marble 
Have  lain  in  the  warm  down ; 
No  heavenly  chant,  no  earthly  care, 
Have  stirred  a  smile  or  frown. 

"  I  wake ;  thy  kiss  is  on  my  lips ; 

Thou  art  my  day,  my  sun ! 
But  where,  O  spirit,  where  wast  thou 
While  the  sands  of  night  have  run  ?  " 


ANNIE   FIELDS  15 

In  the  year  1900  Mrs.  Fields  published 
"Orpheus,  A  Masque",  a  new  inter- 
pretation of  the  old  myth.  It  is  a  great 
and  wonderful  dramatic  poem.  Her  own 
life  work  among  the  poor  and  suffering 
suggested  of  course  the  motive  of  the 
Masque,  but  it  is  so  surrounded  by 
beauty  and  music  and  grace  that  it 
reaches  the  ideal,  and  the  reader  feels 
as  in  certain  of  its  lines, 

"I,  a  listener,  hang 
Like  a  suspended  sense  'twixt  earth  and  heaven." 

Mention  of  her  work  would  be  incom- 
plete if  it  did  not  include  reference  to 
her  notes  on  the  life  and  friendships  of 
Whittier,  in  which  she  makes  the  old 
poet,  who  so  admired  and  loved  her, 
stand  before  us  in  his  own  person,  to- 
gether with  her  memoirs  of  Mrs.  Stowe, 
of  Charles  Dudley  Warner,  her  "Authors 
and  Friends"  and  her  "Shelf  of  Books." 

After  her  husband's  death,  Mrs.  Fields 
continued  to  live  in  the  house  that  they 


16  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

bought,  out  of  hand,  when  strolling  one 
Sunday  afternoon  in  search  of  a  suitable 
home.  They  climbed  over  heaps  of  build- 
ing material  and  saw  what  the  place 
afforded;  and  they  made  it  something 
rarely  individual.  I  remember  now  the 
impression  I  received  when  I  first  went 
there  —  how  many,  many  years  ago. 
Entering  the  house  you  came  into  a 
reception  room  with  dark  blue  velvet 
furnishings  and  gray  rug,  filled  with 
flowers,  every  part  of  the  walls  hung  with 
choice  paintings;  beyond  you  caught 
a  glimpse  of  the  dining  room,  whose 
windows,  latticed  with  ivy,  looked  on 
a  long,  shady  garden  running  down  to 
the  river.  Upstairs  the  room  of  rooms, 
the  library,  ran  the  whole  length  of  the 
house,  with  side  alcoves  at  either  end.  It 
held  unusual  pictures  and  busts,  but  the 
greater  part  of  the  walls  were  covered 
with  books  to  the  ceiling.  The  moss- 
green  carpet  and  draperies  gave  a  sub- 
dued coloring,  and  the  windows  looked 


ANNIE   FIELDS  17 

over  wide  water  to  distant  hills.  It  was 
characteristic  of  Annie  Fields  that  instead 
of  complaining  when  a  block  of  houses 
was  put  up  near  by,  shutting  off  a  part 
of  this  superb  view,  she  had  pleasure 
in  the  thought  of  the  new  homes  and 
happiness  to  be  there.  It  was  not  that 
a  note  of  simple  and  incomparable  ele- 
gance was  struck  here;  it  was  the 
natural  tone  and  harmony  of  the  place 
dominated  by  the  exquisite  spirit  of  a 
pure  and  lofty  nature,  clear-seeing,  here 
all  grace  and  tact  and  gentle  yielding,  here 
inflexible  for  the  right,  and  always  so- 
licitous for  others.  I  felt  myself,  in  that 
first  visit,  in  a  new  world,  as  if  I  had 
stepped  inside  a  home  in  some  enchanted 
wood  and  among  a  rarer  race  of  beings ; 
and  although  frequently  sharing  its  beau- 
tiful hospitality  since  then,  I  never  quite 
lost  the  sensation.  Doubtless  there  were 
other  homes  as  interesting,  as  enviable; 
but  with  a  difference.  The  difference 
was  Annie  Fields. 


18  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

Before  his  death,  Mr.  Fields  suggested 
Sarah  Orne  Jewett  as  a  possible  friend 
and  companion  for  his  wife  in  the  future ; 
and  she  gave  Mrs.  Fields  great  happiness, 
spending  with  her  as  much  time  as  she 
could  spare  from  her  own  delightful  home 
in  South  Berwick,  and  adding  her  own 
peculiar  charm  to  the  house.  Because 
she  had  lost  the  best  of  life,  Mrs.  Fields 
did  not  give  up  life  itself.  After  a  time 
the  days  passed  with  her  as  before, 
except  for  the  great  vacancy.  The 
choicest  of  those  at  home,  the  choicest 
of  those  that  cross  the  water,  poet, 
painter,  and  player,  came  to  find  welcome, 
encouragement  to  budding  power,  greet- 
ing to  acknowledged  achievement;  and 
the  house  was  one  of  the  pleasantest 
spots  on  earth.  Now  and  then  Mrs. 
Fields  and  Miss  Jewett  went  abroad 
for  a  summer's  stay,  as  when  they 
explored  the  woods  of  Barbizon,  and 
visited  Tennyson.  At  another  time  they 
saw  the  "  glory  that  was  Greece."  But 


ANNIE   FIELDS  19 

more  usually  in  the  summer  they  were 
to  be  found  in  the  seaside  house,  built 
by  Mr.  Fields,  on  Thunderbolt  Hill  at 
Manchester-by-the-Sea,  —  which  he  used 
to  be  pleased  to  say  was  built  with  the 
proceeds  of  his  lectures,  —  where  the  steep 
avenue  leads  up  to  a  wonderful  outlook 
of  beauty  set  in  the  midst  of  flaming 
flowers,  three  sides  overlooking  the  wide 
shield  of  the  sea,  but  the  fourth  side  so 
precipitous  that  the  broad  piazza  there  is 
only  a  turret  chamber  above  the  tops  of 
the  deep  woods  and  orchards  below,  with 
the  birds  flying  under  it,  and  looking 
far  over  winding  river,  ripening  meadow, 
and  stretching  sea  again. 

There  at  night  one  by  one  the  lights 
of  the  great  Bay  twinkle  out  in  the  pearly 
twilight,  fluttering,  yet  fixed,  as  if  strange, 
bright-winged  things  were  impaled  on 
the  stone  pillars.  The  summer  sea,  the 
soft  dark,  the  cool  and  salty  breath,  were 
all  a  part  of  the  peace  that  surrounded 
her,  in  that  ideal  home  of  an  ideal 


20  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

woman.  Although  a  great  grief  came 
into  it  in  the  death  of  Sarah  Jewett,  yet 
seldom  has  there  been  a  sweeter  or 
serener  old  age  than  hers.  Sufficiently 
affluent,  in  the  receipt  of  honor,  with 
friends  going  and  coming,  every  morning 
the  motor-car  of  her  generous  sister 
Louisa  at  her  disposal,  every  evening 
music  or  books,  with  the  encouraging 
example  of  her  brilliant  sister  Sarah's 
ninety  years,  the  days  were  full  of  cheer, 
and  still  of  good  works.  And  when  the 
last  great  friend  arrived,  it  was  to  find 
her  simply  fading  away  as  a  star  fades 
in  morning  light. 


II 

SARAH  ORNE  JEWETT 

THE  secret  of  Sarah  Orne  Jewett's 
great  success  in  her  work,  outside  of  its 
artistic  perfection,  is  the  spirit  of  loving 
kindness  and  tender  mercy  that  per- 
vades it.  And  that  is  because  the  same 
spirit  also  pervaded  herself.  She  loved 
her  kind,  and  had  the  warmest  interest  in 
the  actions  and  thoughts  and  feelings  of 
those  about  her. 

The  circumstances  of  her  life  fostered 
this  love.  The  child  of  a  country  doctor 
(than  whom  no  one  stands  in  closer  re- 
lation to  the  countryside),  she  early  went 
about  with  him  on  his  long  drives,  and 
was  admitted  to  an  intimacy  with  the 
lives  of  people  hardly  otherwise  attain- 


22  A    LITTLE    BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

able,  an  intimacy  revealed  on  every  page 
of  her  stories.  Something  of  the  charac- 
ter of  this  wise  and  kind  father,  who 
never  lost  a  chance  of  teaching  her  how 
to  observe,  and  whose  name,  —  Theodore 
Herman  Jewett,  —  has  a  descriptive 
charm,  she  has  painted  in  her  story  of 
"The  Country  Doctor."  But  elsewhere 
she  says :  "My  father  had  inherited  from 
his  father  an  amazing  knowledge  of 
human  nature,  and  from  his  mother's 
French  ancestry  that  peculiarly  French 
trait  called  gaiete  de  cceur.  Through  all 
the  heavy  responsibilities  and  anxieties  of 
his  busy  professional  life,  this  kept  him 
young  at  heart  and  cheerful.  His  visits 
to  his  patients  were  often  made  delightful 
and  refreshing  to  them  by  his  kind  heart 
and  the  charm  of  his  personality.  I  knew 
many  of  the  patients  whom  he  used  to 
visit  on  lonely  inland  farms  or  on  the 
sea-coast  in  York  and  Wells.  I  used  to 
follow  him  about  silently,  like  an  un- 
demanding little  dog,  content  to  follow 


SARAH    ORNE   JEWETT  23 

at  his  heels.  I  had  no  consciousness  of 
watching  or  listening,  or  indeed  of  any 
special  interest  in  the  country  interiors. 
In  fact,  when  the  time  came  that  my  own 
world  of  imagination  was  more  real  to  me 
than  any  other,  I  was  sometimes  per- 
plexed at  my  father's  directing  my  atten- 
tion to  certain  points  of  interest  in  the 
character  or  surroundings  of  our  acquaint- 
ances. I  cannot  help  believing  that  he 
recognized,  long  before  I  did  myself,  in 
what  direction  the  current  of  purpose  in 
my  life  was  setting.  Now,  as  I  write  my 
sketches  of  country  life,  I  remember 
again  and  again  the  wise  things  he  said, 
and  the  sights  he  made  me  see.  He  was 
impatient  only  with  affectation  and  in- 
sincerity." 

He  could  never  have  been  impatient 
with  Sarah,  then;  for  absolute  sim- 
plicity and  sincerity  were  among  her 
chief  characteristics. 

Her  delicate  health,  as  a  child,  obliged 
her  to  be  much  outdoors ;  and  in  the  old 


24  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

town  at  the  head  of  tidewater,  in  the 
Agamenticus  region,  she  had  every  facility 
for  acquiring  a  knowledge  of  nature  and 
of  people;  here  she  attended  the  acad- 
emy, and  found  it  easy  to  write  verse 
and  hard  to  write  prose;  and  here  she 
heard  the  graphic  dialect  of  the  country 
store  and  of  the  wharf,  ran  with  the  other 
children  to  mount  the  logging  team  from 
the  woods  and  ride  into  town  over  the 
creaking  snow,  and  met  at  her  grand- 
father's the  weather-bronzed  ship-masters, 
who  brought,  to  the  children's  great  satis- 
faction, store  of  oranges  and  pineapples 
and  filberts,  and  big  jars  of  olives  and 
tamarinds,  and  brought  something  better 
yet  for  hungry  imaginations  in  their 
stories  of  the  islands  of  the  sea,  of  the 
"  great  storms  on  the  Atlantic  and  winds 
that  blew  them  north-about."  The  place 
was  full  of  tradition;  here  she  listened 
to  many  a  strange  recital  regarding  the 
privateers  of  the  War  of  1812,  whose 
crews  were  shipped  all  alongshore;  re- 


SARAH    ORNE   JEWETT  25 

garding  the  Revolution,  in  which  her 
mother's  people,  the  Gilmans  of  Exeter, 
took  the  rebels'  part,  though  her  father's 
ancestors  could  not  forsake  allegiance 
to  the  dear  mother  country;  and  re- 
garding the  yet  older  and  sadder  days  of 
the  French  and  Indian  wars.  And  here, 
hardly  more  than  a  child,  she  was  a 
writer  for  the  Young  Folks  and  The  River- 
side; and  at  nineteen  sent  her  first 
sketch  to  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  where 
her  genius  was  at  once  recognized  and 
encouraged.  She  published  many 
volumes  after  that,  and  her  work  was 
translated  into  a  foreign  tongue,  but 
nowhere  is  it  loved  so  much  as  at  home, 
where  we  have  the  same  somewhat  tender 
feeling  for  its  faithfulness  and  finish, 
its  humor  and  pathos,  that  we  have  for 
our  family  portraits. 

Surely  no  one  ever  had  a  finer  training 
for  work  than  she  had  in  this  ancient  town 
of  South  Berwick,  called  by  its  old  people 
Barvick,  after  the  Norse  fashion,  where 


26  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

she  was  born  in  a  colonial  house  built  a 
hundred  and  fifty  years  before  and  un- 
touched by  modern  hands.  The  old 
hip-roofed  mansion,  whose  paneled  hall 
with  its  wide  arch  and  ample  staircase 
and  huge  door  opening  into  greenery  of 
lofty  trees  beyond,  gives  one  the  very 
picture  of  hospitable  welcome,  was  always 
her  home,  and  she  had  the  heartiest 
affection  for  it.  "I  was  born  here," 
she  said  once, "  and  I  hope  to  die  here,  leav- 
ing the  lilac  bushes  still  green  and  growing, 
and  all  the  chairs  in  their  places." 

There  hangs  in  the  old  house  a  little 
black  and  white  silhouette  of  one  of  these 
French  grandmothers  of  Sarah's,  of  which 
a  silhouette  of  Sarah  herself,  made  by 
Mrs.  Whitman,  with  the  lovely,  inno- 
cent forehead,  the  delicately  arched  eye- 
brow, the  finely  chiseled  nose,  the  curl 
of  the  upper  lip,  the  exquisite  corners 
of  the  mouth,  the  oval  of  the  cheek, 
is  a  perfect  replica  even  to  the  turning 
of  an  eyelash. 


SARAH   ORNE   JEWETT  27 

Although  she  spent  a  good  part  of  her 
time  here,  she  was  very  often  the  favored 
sharer  of  Annie  Fields' s  home,  in  the  his- 
toric house  on  Charles  Street  in  Boston, 
or  where  the  eagle's  eyrie  of  Thunderbolt 
Hill  has  been  transformed  into  a  place  of 
flowers  in  Manchester-by-the-Sea.  She 
traveled  much  in  America,  and  made 
several  visits  abroad;  but  she  always 
said  she  had  taken  no  greater  delight 
in  these  journey  ings  than  in  the  rides 
and  tramps  within  the  borders  of  old 
Berwick.  I  like  to  think  of  her  the  guest 
of  Tennyson,  as  he  takes  in  his  hands  the 
crystal  sphere  she  wears  on  her  watch- 
chain,  and  surveys  the  stately  grace 
and  dark  beauty  of  the  American  girl  — 
as  if  we  had  sent  her  to  the  poet  as  our 
best  and  finest.  I  like  even  better  to 
think  of  her  in  the  old  forest  of  Barbizon, 
the  haunt  of  Millet,  between  whose  work 
and  her  own  a  subtle  resemblance  lies, 
and  where  the  French  blood  in  her  veins 
gave  her  a  certain  right  of  place.  Per- 


28  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

haps  it  is  this  foreign  strain  which  lent 
such  an  attraction  to  her  manner,  a 
manner  that  combined  a  height  of  deli- 
cate refinement  and  cordial  artlessness 
which  both  fired  your  fancy  and  warmed 
your  heart.  When  you  saw  her  lofty 
carriage,  her  dark  eyes,  her  high-bred 
and  beautiful  features,  you  remembered 
the  royal  significance  of  her  name  in 
Scripture,  and  you  were  half  inclined  to 
wonder  how  it  was  that  a  princess  of  the 
old  regime  was  writing  stories  that  were 
the  accurate  transcript  of  the  lives  of 
farming  and  sea-faring  folk.  But  when, 
if  by  rare  fortune,  you  heard  her  read 
from  her  own  pages,  with  a  voice  like  a 
soft  south  wind,  and  with  a  quaint  and 
lovely  air  that  was  all  her  own,  then  you 
knew  that  these  stories  of  hers  were 
written  from  the  heart  that  beat  for 
humbler,  homelier  people  as  if  with  the 
same  blood. 

She  was  always  frankly  pleased  with 
the  praise  her  work  received,  and  with 


SARAH    ORNE   JEWETT  29 

every  success  she  had.  When  one  of  her 
books  had  been  translated  into  another 
language,  she  writes  to  the  Aldriches, 
"She  sent  me  a  volume  of  S.  O.  J. 
all  in  French,  which  caused  such  pride 
of  heart  that  no  further  remarks  are 
ventured  on  the  subject."  She  was 
always  ready  to  give  praise  to  others. 
I  remember  once  having  sent  to  my 
agent  what  I  considered  a  very  poor 
story,  to  be  sold  into  obscurity,  how 
woefully  ashamed  I  was  when  I  saw 
it  one  morning  spread  out  and  illus- 
trated in  the  Sunday  paper,  where  every 
one  might  read  it,  feeling  that  it  was 
ignoble  to  have  written  it  at  all.  And 
then  there  came  by  messenger  a  note 
from  Sarah  giving  the  story  the  most 
magical  interpretation.  She  was  full 
of  a  sweet  and  surprising  magnanimity 
and  gratefulness. 

In  writing  of  the  day  on  which  she 
received  the  gratifying  degree  from 
Bowdoin  College,  she  said  of  her  sister, 


30  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

"Mary  was  dear  and  lovely;  and  the 
great  day  was  hers  as  much  as  mine." 
And  one  day,  writing  to  Mrs.  Fields, 
through  whom  many  of  her  friendships 
and  enjoyments  were  formed,  she  said, 
"None  of  the  great  gifts  I  have  received 
out  of  loving  and  being  with  you  seems 
to  me  as  great  as  having  seen  Tennyson." 
Her  characterization  of  Tennyson,  by 
the  way,  was  almost  as  fine  and  wonder- 
ful as  the  man  himself. 

She  was  immensely  interested  in  people, 
and  people  loved  her  for  it.  Wherever 
she  went  she  made  friends,  —  some  of 
them  her  own  age,  with  delightful  con- 
temporaneous intimacy,  and  others  much 
older  but  made  to  feel  young  in  her 
companionship.  "It  has  been  one  of  the 
best  things  in  life,"  she  wrote  once,  "to 
take  up  some  of  the  old  friendships  that 
my  mother  had  to  let  fall;  there  is 
a  double  sweetness  in  doing  this ;  one 
feels  so  much  of  the  pleasure  of  those 
who  seem  to  see  something  of  their  lost 


SARAH   ORNE   JEWETT  31 

companionship  return."  People  in  the 
humble  ways  of  life,  artists  and  poets, 
great  novelists,  and  those  of  lesser  note 
were  her  friends  and  lovers:  abroad, 
Mrs.  Humphry  Ward,  Mrs.  Meynell, 
Freeman,  the  historian,  Madame  Blanc- 
Bentzon,  Vernon  Lee,  Mr.  Bryce,  the 
Arnolds,  Henry  James,  and  many  others ; 
and  at  home  the  list  included  Mr.  Lowell, 
Mr.  Longfellow,  Mrs.  Bell,  Anne  Whit- 
ney, Mr.  Aldrich,  Mrs.  Whitman,  Doctor 
Holmes,  Celia  Thaxter,  Mr.  Norton, 
Katharine  Wormeley,  Mr.  S.  S.  McClure, 
Miss  Gather,  Mr.  Bliss  Perry,  and  many 
others  of  especial  interest.  There  must 
have  been  an  inherent  excellence  in  this 
young  girl  from  a  country  town  to  have 
made  her  so  choice  a  person  in  such  eyes. 
Dearly  as  she  loved  people,  she  also 
loved  and  knew  all  the  ways  of  wood 
and  fell  and  stream.  Once,  after  a 
rather  sleepless  night,  she  writes  to  her 
friend,  "I  had  one  most  beautiful  time 
which  was  after  your  own  heart.  It 


32  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

began  to  be  light,  and  after  spending 
some  time  half  out  of  tke  window  hearing 
one  bird  tune  up  after  another,  I  half 
dressed  myself  and  went  out  and  stayed 
until  it  was  bright  daylight.  I  went  up 
the  street  and  out  into  the  garden,  where 
I  had  a  beautiful  time,  and  was  neigh- 
borly with  the  hop-toads  and  with  a 
joyful  robin  who  was  sitting  on  a  corner 
of  the  barn,  and  I  became  very  intimate 
with  a  big  poppy  which  had  made  every 
arrangement  to  bloom  as  soon  as  the  sun 
came  up.  There  was  a  bright  little 
waning  moon  over  the  hill,  where  I  had 
a  great  mind  to  go,  but  there  seemed  to 
be  difficulties,  as  I  might  be  missed,  or 
somebody  might  break  into  the  house 
where  I  had  broken  out." 

No  one  ever  enjoyed  the  loveliness  of 
things  in  France  more  than  she  did. 
"The  air  was  about  as  sweet  as  it  could  be, 
with  that  dry,  strange,  sweet  old  scent 
that  tries  to  make  you  remember  things 
that  happened  long  before  you  were  born. 


SARAH   ORNE   JEWETT  33 

And  we  went  walking  on,  and  presently 
we  came  to  great  gates,  and  still  walked 
on  with  innocent  hearts  and  a  love  of 
pleasure,  and  we  crossed  a  moat  full  of 
flowers  and  green  bushes,  and  the  other 
side  of  the  old  bridge,  beyond  two  slender 
marble  columns  with  exquisite  capitals, 
was  another  gateway  and  a  courtyard 
and  an  old  chateau  asleep  in  the  sun. 
All  the  great  windows  and  the  hall  door 
at  the  top  of  the  steps  were  open,  and 
round  the  three  sides  and  up  to  the  top 
of  the  tower  green  vines  had  grown,  with 
room  enough  to  keep  themselves  separate, 
and  one  of  them  near  by  was  full  of  bees, 
and  you  could  hear  no  other  sound.  It 
was  La  Belle  au  Bois  dormante.  You 
just  kept  as  still  as  you  could,  and 
looked  a  little  while  and  came  away 
again.  And  the  stone  of  the  chateau  was 
reddish,  and  the  green  was  green,  and  the 
sunshine  was  of  that  afternoon  softness 
that  made  the  whole  sight  of  the  old 
house  flicker  and  smile  back  at  you 


34  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

as  if  you  were  trying  hard  to  look  at 
something  in  a  dream."  Isn't  that  ex- 
quisite ? 

Her  love  of  the  beautiful  was  fully 
satisfied  in  Greece. 

"When  I  think  what  you  would  say, 
and  feel,  at  the  sight  of  this  spring  land- 
scape and  the  wintry  sky,  of  such  as- 
tonishing blue,  with  its  blinding  light, 
like  one  of  our  winter  mornings  after  a 
snowstorm,  and  the  colors  of  the  moun- 
tain ranges  and  the  sea,  dazzling,  and 
rimmed  by  far-off  islands  and  mountains 
to  the  south ;  as  one  looks  from  the  Acrop- 
olis and  all  the  spring  fields  below,  and 
the  old  columns  and  the  little,  near-by 
flowers,  poppies  and  daisies  —  oh,  when 
I  see  all  this  and  think  that  you  can't  see 
it,  too !  And  then,  when  I  remember 
what  my  feelings  have  been  toward  the 
Orpheus  and  Eurydice  and  the  Bacchic 
Dance,  and  then  see  these  wonderful 
marbles  here,  row  upon  row,  it  is  quite 
too  much  for  a  plain  heart  to  bear." 


SARAH    ORNE   JEWETT  35 

But  then  again  she  saw  as  much 
beauty  at  home,  even  although  of  a 
different  sort.  Of  a  Watteau  fete  she 
writes:  "At  the  close,  when  shepherd 
and  nymph  strayed  away  down  the 
field  to  the  sea,  and  Eros  strayed  after, 
and  the  sheep  and  lamb  after  him,  it 
made  a  live  little  procession  that  came 
right  from  a  page  of  Theocritus  ! "  Writ- 
ing of  some  pine-trees,  she  says,  "Oh,  do 
go  next  summer  to  see  the  most  superb 
creatures  that  ever  grew  .  .  .  standing 
so  tall  that  their  great  green  tops  seem 
to  belong  to  the  next  world."  To-day 
she  discovers  a  delightful  glen,  of  which 
she  says,  "I  never  have  seen  a  more 
exquisite  spot,"  and  at  a  later  season,  "I 
shall  remember  as  long  as  I  remember 
anything  a  small  seedling  apple-tree  that 
stood  by  a  wall  in  a  high  wild  pasture  at 
the  White  Hills,  —  standing  proudly  over 
its  first  small  crop  of  yellow  apples  all 
fallen  into  a  little  almost  hollow  of  the 
soft  turf  below." 


36  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

And  then,  with  eye  and  heart  for 
another  sort  of  beauty,  she  writes,  "I 
need  not  tell  you  what  a  joyful  home- 
coming it  was.  Mother's  look  as  she 
came  running  out  to  meet  Mary  was 
something  that  I  never  shall  forget.  It 
was  like  some  old  painter's  picture  of  a 
Bible  scene !  With  her  arms  out,  and 
her  aging  face  and  figure." 

And  with  all  this  Sarah  Jewett  loved 
books  as  well;  she  was  an  untiring 
reader  of  both  serious  books,  and  of  lighter 
ones,  — fiction,  essays,  biographies,  poetry. 
Of  Miss  Thackeray  she  says,  "One  flies 
to  Miss  Thackeray's  stories  at  certain 
turns  of  Fate,  for  a  world  full  of  shadows, 
and  written  out  of  deep  and  touching 
experience,  but  with  beauty  and  consola- 
tion never  forgotten  or  curtained  away. 
Don't  you  remember  Fitzgerald's  saying 
somewhere  that  he  thirsts  for  the  de- 
lightful?"  And  of  Thackeray  himself 
she  writes,  "Thackeray  is  so  great,  a 
great  Christian.  He  does  not  affect, 


SARAH    ORNE   JEWETT  37 

he  humbly  learns  and  reverently  tries 
to  teach  out  of  his  own  experiences." 

Sarah's  intimacy  with  the  deeper  things 
of  life,  and  her  understanding  of  small 
troubles,  was  something  wonderful.  She 
had  a  real  sympathy  with  Miss  Austen. 
"Dear  me,"  she  explains,  "how  like  her 
people  are  to  the  people  we  knew  years  ago  ! 
It  is  just  as  much  New  England  before  the 
war  —  that  is,  in  provincial  towns  —  as  it 
ever  was  Old  England.  I  am  going  to  read 
another,  'Persuasion'  tasted  so  good." 

She  was  so  in  earnest  in  her  own  work 
and  ultimate  purposes  that  she  never 
hesitated  to  talk  about  her  stories.  "A 
story  which  has  been  lagging  a  good  while 
is  beginning  to  write  itself.  Its  name  is 
'A  Player  Queen',  and  it  hopes  to  be 
liked,"  she  says  in  one  of  her  letters. 
Of  "The  Tory  Lover"  she  says,  "I  grow 
very  melancholy  if  I  fall  to  thinking  of 
the  distance  between  my  poor  story  and 
the  first  dreams  of  it."  She  recognized 
a  certain  sympathy  between  herself  and 


38  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

what  Stepniak  said  of  Turgenieff :  ' '  There 
was  in  him  such  a  love  of  light,  sunshine, 
and  living  human  poetry,  such  an  organic 
aversion  to  all  that  is  ugly  or  coarse, 
or  discordant,  that  he  made  himself 
almost  exclusively  the  poet  of  the  gentler 
side  of  human  nature";  which  is  certainly 
very  descriptive  of  Sarah,  herself. 

It  is  of  stories  in  general,  as  well  as 
of  her  own,  that  she  said  what  many  a 
writer  has  thought  before:  "Good 
heavens !  what  a  wonderful  kind  of 
chemistry  it  is  that  evolves  all  the  details 
of  a  story  and  writes  them  presently  in 
one  flash  of  time !  For  two  weeks  I 
have  been  noticing  a  certain  string  of 
things,  and  having  hints  of  character, 
etc.,  and  day  before  yesterday  the  plan 
of  the  story  comes  into  my  mind,  and  in 
half  an  hour  I  have  put  all  the  little  words 
and  ways  into  their  places  and  can  read  it 
off  to  myself  like  print.  Who  does  it  ?  for 
I  grow  more  and  more  sure  that  I  don't ! " 

The    letters,    which    Mrs.    Fields    so 


SARAH    ORNE   JEWETT  39 

tenderly  arranged,  are  really  an  auto- 
biography, and  are  written  in  a  way  as 
natural  as  the  way  she  talked.  They 
are  full  of  lovely  passages,  full  of  gentle 
humor  and  witty  turns,  as  when  she  says, 
"I  have  so  much  to  tell  that  my  pen 
splutters,"  or  when  the  two  boys  went  to 
the  Fair  "with  smiles  on  their  faces  that 
seemed  to  tie  behind  and  be  quite  visible 
as  they  walked  away." 

Any  one  is  mistaken  who  thinks  Sarah 
Orne  Jewett's  stories  are  merely  narra- 
tives told  as  she  happened  to  think. 
They  are  works  where  the  composition  is 
like  that  of  a  fine  painting,  full  of  balance 
of  light  and  shade,  of  consummate  art. 
Although  their  truthfulness  is  similar  to 
that  of  Jane  Austen's  work,  yet  they  are 
of  finer,  sweeter  fiber,  and  will  be  read 
as  long  as  our  language  lasts.  What 
writer  would  not  rejoice  in  the  author- 
ship of  that  great  story,  "The  Town 
Poor",  of  the  beautiful,  the  wholesome, 
strong,  and  altogether  noble  "Country  of 


40  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

the  Pointed  Firs",  and  of  the  incompar- 
able delicacy,  the  charm,  the  tender 
pathos  of  that  lovely  and  inimitable 
"A  Dunnet  Shepherdess"  ! 

Death  came  to  our  friend  far  too  soon. 
She  was  thrown  from  a  carriage,  and  a 
long  illness  resulted  from  the  injury  she 
received.  She  made  a  brave  effort,  but 
it  was  in  vain. 

Although  she  had  the  usual  griefs 
that  come  to  all  of  us  in  the  loss  of  be- 
loved relatives  and  friends,  yet  in  other 
respects,  and  except  for  occasional  slight 
illnesses,  Sarah  Jewett  had  a  delightful 
life,  and  made  it  delightful  to  all  about 
her.  And  a  great  factor  in  that  life  was 
her  own  nature,  her  genuineness,  her  inno- 
cence, her  friendliness,  her  intimate  sweet- 
ness, her  common  sense,  her  nobility, 
her  sympathy.  An  old  friend  once  said 
to  her,  "I  want  you  to  thank  your  mother 
for  bringing  you  into  the  world."  And 
I  think  all  who  knew  her,  all  who  read 
her  writing,  feel  the  same  way. 


SARAH   ORNE   JEWETT  41 

A  part  of  Sarah's  work,  known  to  but 
few  of  her  closer  friends,  is  her  verse. 
She  apparently  thought  it  of  too  little 
dignity  to  be  mentioned.  She  was  greatly 
mistaken.  It  is  difficult  to  speak  of  it  to 
those  unacquainted  with  it  without  seem- 
ing to  say  too  much. 

THE  GLOUCESTER  MOTHER 

When  Autumn  winds  are  high 
They  wake  and  trouble  me, 
With  thoughts  of  people  lost 
A-coming  on  the  coast, 
And  all  the  ships  at  sea. 

How  dark,  how  dark  and  cold, 
And  fearful  in  the  waves, 
Are  tired  folk  who  lie  not  still 
And  quiet  in  their  graves ;  — 
In  moving  waters  deep, 
That  will  not  let  men  sleep 
As  they  may  sleep  on  any  hill ; 
May  sleep  ashore  till  time  is  old, 
And  all  the  earth  is  frosty  cold. — 
Under  the  flowers  a  thousand  springs 
They  sleep  and  dream  of  many  things. 


42  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

God  bless  them  all  who  die  at  sea  ! 
If  they  must  sleep  in  restless  waves, 
God  make  them  dream  they  are  ashore, 
With  grass  above  their  graves. 

SARAH  OKNE  JEWETT 

Whether  it  takes  shape  because  when 
walking  in  Copp's  Hill  Burying  Ground 
she  sees  a  little  stone  to  "  Miss  Polly 
Townsend,  aged  nine",  or  when  thinking 
of  the  restless  graves  of  the  drowned  fish- 
ermen, or  of  any  other  simple  human 
theme,  her  heart  goes  out  in  these  verses, 
and  they  are  not  only  beautiful  and  tune- 
ful, but  infinitely  touching  with  sweet 
and  tender  pitifulness.  It  is  to  be  hoped 
that  they  will  yet  be  collected  in  a  most 
welcome  volume  to  be  treasured  by  her 
lovers. 


Ill 

ANNE  WHITNEY 

A  TINY  woman,  wonderfully  radiant 
—  with  perfect  features,  with  a  deli- 
cately lovely  skin,  illumined  by  flash- 
ing dark  eye  and  loose  curling  silver 
hair  —  as  you  looked  at  her,  you 
wondered  how  those  little  hands  modeled 
and  disposed  the  great  masses  of  sculp- 
ture, you  wondered  at  the  immensity 
of  the  work  they  have  given  to  the  world, 
or  you  would  have  done  so  if  it  were  not 
for  the  royal  bearing  and  the  glance  glow- 
ing with  fire  from  heaven. 

Born  of  wise  and  strong  parents,  who 
lived  to  great  age,  one  of  them  rounding 
a  century,  Anne  Whitney  always  had 
perfect  health,  and  she  never  knew  fail- 


44  A   LITTLE   BOOK  OF   FRIENDS 

ure  or  any  other  discouragement  than 
the  artistic  dissatisfaction  which  genius 
is  apt  to  feel  regarding  work  that  has 
not  reached  the  standard  which  is  so 
high  that  genius  alone  sees  it. 

Her  gaze  was  trained  high  from  the 
first.  She  was  the  disciple  and  darling 
of  those  who  conjure  with  great  names 
in  her  early  youth,  at  the  time  when 
Frederika  Bremer  mentions  her  charm; 
the  friend  of  Emerson  and  Parker  and 
Phillips  and  Sumner  and  the  rest,  and 
she  lived  on  the  plane  of  such  altitudes 
ever  after.  Her  moral  sense  went  hand 
in  hand  with  her  other  powers,  dominat- 
ing them  and  leading  her  always,  early 
and  late,  into  the  espousal  of  the  large 
reforms. 

She  was  still  quite  young  when  her 
poems  were  handed  about  from  one  to 
another  as  things  of  wonder,  before 
there  was  any  center  of  distribution 
like  the  magazines  of  to-day ;  then  they 
emblazoned  the  pages  of  the  Atlantic 


ANNE   WHITNEY  45 

Monthly  with  beauty,  and  when  she 
at  last  published  a  small  book  of  them, 
those  who  loved  great  verse  felt  that 
here  was  a  poet  of  the  antique  mold, 
one  whose  verse  was  strong-winged,  and 
eagle-eyed,  glorious  with  height  and 
depth  of  flight,  with  luster  and  inter- 
changing music.  I  know  of  few  verses 
more  great  or  beautiful  in  the  language 
than  the  "Sonnets  to  Beauty",  and 
those  again  to  "Night",  than  "Camille", 
the  "Hymn  to  the  Sea",  the  "Last 
Dream."  They  are  the  sublimation  of 
song,  and  you  feel  when  you  read  them 
that  it  is  impossible  for  poetry  to  go 
farther.  The  first  edition,  published  dur- 
ing the  stress  of  the  Civil  War,  when  the 
hearts  and  souls  of  people  were  torn 
and  anguished,  never,  through  the  force 
of  circumstances,  received  the  attention 
it  deserved.  The  edition,  however,  was 
early  exhausted,  and  although  those  who 
had  report  of  them  tried  to  obtain  them, 
copies  were  not  to  be  had. 


46  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

Many  years  later,  a  second  edition 
was  published,  with  some  additions,  some 
omissions  and  emendations. 

There  is  no  more  unfailing  test  of 
poetry  than  is  given  by  reading  it  again 
after  a  lapse  of  years;  since  what  filled 
the  cup  with  precious  ichor  at  one  time 
may,  when  another  age  and  time  rule, 
seem  destitute  of  sparkle  or  flavor.  But 
this  verse  met  that  test  successfully,  for 
the  very  wine  of  life  is  poured  on  every 
page.  Those  who  loved  the  book  in  the 
beginning,  keeping  it  beside  them,  did 
not,  of  course,  have  to  use  the  test;  for 
they  took  it  up  frequently,  turning  the 
leaves  as  they  do  those  of  Milton  and 
Wordsworth,  of  Shelley  and  Keats  and 
Byron,  of  Emerson,  Tennyson,  and 
Browning.  For  the  verse  there  is  a  part 
of  that  wide  wave  which  swept  over  the 
world  with  the  work  of  those  poets. 
It  meets  comparison  with  theirs,  is  of 
the  great  moods  and  moments,  of  lofty 
flight  and  far  reach,  full  of  perennial 


ANNE   WHITNEY  47 

freshness,  and  saturated  with  beauty. 
At  the  same  time  the  poems  are  various, 
these  of  a  severe  simplicity,  those  of  an 
intimate  reserve,  and  others  of  dramatic 
force  and  fire,  and  the  more  recent 
ones  showed  surprisingly  the  strength  of 
the  original  impulse.  The  great  poems 
of  the  book  are  imperishable  creations, 
with  immortal  strains  in  every  one, 
satisfying  with  their  loveliness  and  com- 
pleteness, and  with  their  great  music. 
One  meets  on  every  page  of  the  book 
phrases,  single  lines,  stanzas,  that  startle 
with  their  sonorous  strength,  their  sweet- 
ness, their  penetration  and  suggestion, 
their  truth  and  beauty. 

Neither  Byron's  "Apostrophe  to  the 
Ocean",  nor  Swinburne's  "I  will  go 
down  to  the  great  Sea  Mother",  exceed, 
if  they  equal,  the  "Hymn  to  the  Sea", 
with  its  lofty  lines,  its  rippling  song,  its 
deeps  of  thought.  Few  men  have  written 
such  poetry  as  this,  nor  has  any  woman 
except  Anne  Whitney.  Women  have 


48  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

indeed  written  great  and  beautiful  po- 
etry; but  it  seems  to  me  that  this  is 
greater  and  more  beautiful  than  all. 
There  is  no  affectation  in  it,  no  forced 
note;  it  is  spontaneous  as  it  is  strong. 
Where  shall  we  find  more  large  expres- 
sion, more  subtle  sense  of  beauty,  more 
well-ordered  art,  than  in  this  : 

"When  morning,  loosing  from  its  crimson  drifts, 
Some  panting  skylark  overtakes,  most  tender 
Of  such  weak  rivalships,  and  prone  to  render 
Homage  unto  great-heartedness,  it  lifts 
The  breaking  strain,  and  all  along  its  lines 
Of  thrilling  light,  its  currents  of  pure  air 
And  rosy  mists,  winds  it  at  will, 
Unites  and  separates,  and  still 
Wreathes  it  and  builds  anew  beyond  despair, 
Till    light    is    song,    song    light  —  through   all 
heaven's  steadfast  signs." 

Or,  again,  take  this  picture  of  tranquil 
midnight : 

"There  curved  the  mountain  line  away; 
And  there,  the  murmuring  lapse  of  blue 

Let  in  between  green  silences, 
To  ripple  the  level  smoothness  through : 


ANNE   WHITNEY  49 

And  'mid  soft  light  and  dew 
Temur's  hushed  palace  rose  into  the  skies. 

"What  life  in  every  peaceful  thing  ! 
What  trance  of  living,  joyful  might ! 

The  heavens  may  breathe  it  unto  men, 
And  bulbuls  by  the  charmed  light 

Sing  it  to  sacred  night, 
But  who  may  utter  it  again?" 

Of   a   different   quality   is   the   proud 
assurance  in  the  lines : 

"Dear  then  to  her  and  to  the  silent  Powers, 
And  borne  on  their  strong  wings  above  defeat 
And  fear  of  mockery,  all  they  who  build 
In  stern  emprise  a  shrine  for  the  Unseen ; 
Making  life  poor  to  show  how  rich  it  is. 
Round  them  heaven's  flaming  currents   stoop 

and  play, 

And  lap  the  stifling  vapors  of  the  world, 
Till  the  space  freshens  into  festal  depths ; 
And  Soul,  before  a  royal  mendicant, 
Pensioned  of  flesh  along  the  dusky  way, 
Goes  forth  with  bounty  to  exultant  crowds, 
With  pulse  of  music  ordering  the  winds, 
And  trumpets  blowing  the  eternal  morn." 

Something  of  the  same  sort  is  expressed 
in  another  poem : 


50  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

"Who  meet 

Half-way  the  coming  fate  and  fling 
Their  hoarded  treasures  at  her  feet, 
Shall  feel  through  all  her  clamoring 
Her  hard  eye  quail ;  she  knows  'twere  vain 
To  empty  what  heaven  brims  again." 

Nothing  that  one  can  say  is  adequate 
to  do  justice  to  the  scope  and  dignity 
and  splendor,  to  the  quick  sensibility 
and  melting  charm  of  her  verse : 

"Darkness  surrounds  me  with  its  phantom  hosts, 
Till  silence  is  enchanted  speech.     I  feel 
Those  half-spent  airs  that  through  the  laurel 

reel, 
And    night's    loud    heart-beats    in    the    tropic 

coasts  — 

And  soaring  amid  everlasting  frosts' 
To  super-sensual  rest,  as  it  might  outweigh 
A  whole  world's  strife,  o'er  me  gaunt  Himaleh 
Droops  his  broad  wing  of  calm.     Those  peaks, 

like  ghosts 

Outstaring  Time,  through  darkness  glimmering  ! 
No  rush  of  pinion  there,  nor  bubbling  low  — 
But  death,  and  silence  past  imagining;  — 
Only,  day  in  and  out,  with  endless  swing, 
Their  aged  shadows  move,  and  picture  slow 
One  on  another's  unrelenting  snow." 


ANNE   WHITNEY  51 

It  was  thought  at  first  that  of  course 
poetry  was  to  be  Anne's  natural  expres- 
sion. But  she  had  always  had  facility 
with  her  pencil,  and  one  day  in  a  conser- 
vatory, falling  in  with  an  overturned  pot 
of  clay,  she  stooped  to  trace  out  a  fancy, 
beginning  carelessly,  to  end  seriously, 
coming  back  to  it  next  day  full  of  ardor. 
"I  have  done  it,  Sarah,"  she  called  to 
her  sister,  "and  I  always  knew  I  could !" 
From  that  time  she  gave  herself  up  to 
sculpture,  obliged  to  work  without  aid 
or  instruction,  for  there  was  nothing  of 
the  sort  then  in  this  country,  and  there 
were  but  one  or  two  sculptors.  Except 
for  some  extended  anatomical  studies  with 
Dr.  Rimmer  and  the  friendly  comment  of 
the  only  sculptor  she  knew,  genius  was 
her  only  teacher. 

A  statue  of  Godiva,  unclasping  the 
"wedded  eagles  of  her  belt",  full  of 
purity  and  purpose,  was  her  first  consider- 
able work;  and  it  was  followed  by  one 
called  "Africa",  a  recumbent  figure  of 


52  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

the  African  type,  just  awaking  from 
sleep,  wondering,  bewildered,  and  throw- 
ing off  the  wild  beast's  skin  that  has 
enwrapped  her.  The  colossal  size  of 
the  subject  has  a  tropical  and  continental 
significance;  the  sleeper  wakes  to  the 
measured  step,  the  swelling  music  of  the 
march  of  the  ages ;  she  shades  her  eyes 
from  the  blinding  light  of  the  new  revela- 
tion —  when  you  saw  it  you  could  think 
only  of  Michelangelo.  "And  Ethiopia 
shall  soon  stretch  out  her  hands  unto 
God  ",  was  the  legend  around  the  plinth. 
She  had  it  broken  up  after  a  while, 
however. 

In  full  contrast  with  this  was  her 
"Lotus  Eater",  a  youth's  figure,  beauti- 
ful in  excess  of  languor,  and  bearing 
all  the  blissful  burden  of  Tennyson's 
poem  and  of  the  Homeric  legend. 

Then  there  was  a  beautiful  bas-relief 
of  Chaucer,  a  group  of  spirited  horses' 
heads,  and  various  portrait  busts. 

These  were  followed  by  a  statue  of  Tous- 


ANNE   WHITNEY  53 

saint  L'Ouverture,  black  but  mighty, 
nude  in  his  chill  dungeon.  Betrayed, 
forsaken,  destroyed,  but  unshaken,  heroic 
to  his  last  fiber,  he  has  written  on  the 
floor,  Dieu  se  charge,  and  while  he  looks 
at  you  with  sadness  not  to  be  spoken 
in  his  eyes,  his  whole  mien  declares  his 
knowledge  of  the  eternal  justice  which 
shall  right  the  wrong  at  last. 

Shortly  after  this  Miss  Whitney  went 
abroad,  with  Adeline  Manning,  —  herself 
an  artist  of  high  ideals,  the  friend  whose 
life  was  a  part  of  her  own,  —  spending  five 
years  in  profound  study  of  ancient  sculp- 
ture, most  of  the  time  in  Rome,  but  some 
of  it  in  Paris,  Florence,  and  Munich. 

One  of  the  results  of  her  work  abroad 
was  the  statue  of  the  "  Chaldean  Astrono- 
mer", reverent,  intent,  searching  the 
great  mystery  of  the  stars,  with  the 
shining  of  their  eternal  secret  in  his 
countenance. 

But  a  still  finer  work  was  the  superb 
"Roma",  a  magnificent  old  woman,  clad 


54  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

in  the  tattered  robes  of  her  greatness, 
sitting  on  the  capital  of  an  overturned 
Corinthian  column,  the  mother  of  many 
nations,  the  maker  of  laws,  the  exacter  of 
tribute  from  the  ends  of  the  earth,  wear- 
ing now  the  badge  of  the  licensed  beggar, 
holding  a  penny  between  her  fingers, 
old  patrician  fingers,  and  dreaming  what 
dreams  of  past  conquest,  of  dulled  song, 
of  lost  splendor  and  power!  The  face 
is  as  strong,  as  mystic  as  the  Sibyl's, 
the  whole  proud  wretchedness  is  heart- 
rending, and  the  beauty  is  absolute. 
The  statue  had  such  an  effect  that 
various  of  her  American  friends  thought 
it  not  safe  to  have  certain  Italians 
aware  of  it. 

When  the  sculptor  returned  to  America, 
it  was  with  the  technique  of  her  art 
complete,  and  fired  and  inspired  by 
the  great  masterpieces  that  had  been  the 
companions  of  her  last  five  years.  She 
executed  then  several  fine  portrait-busts 
of  the  presidents  of  Harvard  and  Amherst 


ANNE    WHITNEY  55 

colleges,  of  Mr.  Garrison,  of  the  poet 
Keats.  A  replica  of  the  latter  was  later 
made  by  her  to  be  set  up  in  the  Parish 
Church  of  Hampstead,  England,  as  a 
memorial  to  him  whose  name  was  writ 
in  water. 

Going  to  Europe  a  second  time,  she 
completed  for  the  State  of  Massachu- 
setts the  statue  of  Sam  Adams,  a  marble 
copy  of  which  is  in  the  pantheon  of  our 
national  gods  in  Washington,  while  the 
original,  in  bronze,  in  one  of  the  busiest 
of  the  Boston  squares,  arrests  the  eye 
by  its  strength  and  simplicity,  and  by 
its  controlled  energy  and  fire. 

Anne  Whitney  did  not  make  her  great 
triumphs  without  arousing  envy  and 
jealousy,  and  becoming  the  victim  of 
intrigue.  When  the  designs  for  a  sitting 
statue  of  Charles  Sumner  were  sent  in, 
it  was  a  matter  of  public  report  that 
the  award  was  given  to  hers  till  it  was 
discovered  that  it  was  by  a  woman. 
She  had  never  competed  before,  and 


56  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

she  never  did  so  again.  The  statue  was, 
a  long  time  afterward,  erected  in  the 
grounds  of  Harvard  University. 

A  statue  of  Harriet  Martineau,  in 
marble,  larger  than  life,  an  impressive 
image  of  intellectual  calm,  given  to 
Wellesley  College,  was  singularly  beauti- 
ful, and  might  have  sat  for  a  type  of 
womanhood  itself;  it  was  uncovered  in 
the  Old  South  Church,  with  speeches  by 
Wendell  Phillips  and  others,  and  seemed 
to  mark  an  epoch  in  the  work  of  women 
in  this  country.  It  was  destroyed  when 
the  building  that  contained  it  was 
burned. 

Her  next  work  was  the  statue  of  Leif 
Ericsson,  in  bronze,  whose  erection  was 
the  occasion  of  a  celebration  by  the 
Scandinavians  in  New  England,  and  an 
address  in  Fanueil  Hall.  The  voyager 
is  a  sailor  of  rough  waves ;  he  stands 
firmly  on  the  prow  of  his  ship,  and  shield- 
ing his  eyes  from  the  sun,  looks  out 
over  the  mighty  land  he  has  found. 


ANNE   WHITNEY  57 

Beardless  and  bold,  he  is  the  very  in- 
carnation of  the  spirit  of  youth  and  ad- 
venture and  boundless  hope.  All  this 
is  great  and  splendid  work,  but  it  is 
not  the  half.  There  was  a  charming 
fountain  full  of  light  airiness  and  grace, 
a  child  frolicking  among  huge  calla  lily 
leaves,  sent  to  the  Columbian  Exposi- 
tion, together  with  "Roma",  enlarged 
to  the  heroic,  a  copy  of  Leif  Ericsson, 
and  portrait-busts  of  Frances  Willard, 
Mrs.  Stowe,  and  Lucy  Stone,  accurate 
in  likeness  and  wonderful  in  art,  each  of 
them  the  living  woman,  but  so  trans- 
figured that  her  soul  shone  through  the 
stone. 

Some  of  this  great  artist's  loveliest 
work  is  in  depicting  children  and  groups 
of  children.  During  her  second  stay  in 
Europe  she  did  some  delightful  things  of 
the  sort,  as  well  as  the  head  of  an  old 
woman  of  ideal  ugliness,  a  model  once  of 
the  French  artists,  whom  she  drove  to 
despair  by  always  falling  asleep  while 


58  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

they  worked.  Miss  Whitney  seized  the 
moment  like  an  inspiration  and  modeled 
her  asleep  in  a  triumph  of  realism. 

At  about  the  same  time  she  did  the 
"Faun  of  Fontainebleu,"  the  head  of  a 
little  peasant  child,  the  most  woodsy, 
tricksy,  humorsome,  laughing  thing  alive, 
it  seems.  The  modeling  is  exquisite, 
full  of  lines  of  antique  grace ;  the  broad 
mouth  and  flat  nose  are  molded  into 
beauty,  the  flesh  is  real,  the  glance  is 
of  infinite  mirth,  and  there  is  just  the 
one  little  trace  of  melancholy  in  the 
midst  of  the  mirth,  regret  that  she  is 
not  human.  When  the  French  artists 
saw  these  things,  they  laughed  at  the 
idea  of  her  wishing  to  learn  of  them. 
A  copy  of  this  little  treasure  I  own  as 
her  gift,  as  well  as  the  beautiful  bust  of 
Adeline  Manning. 

After  the  death  of  her  mother,  who  lived 
for  over  a  hundred  years,  Miss  Whitney, 
with  her  sister  and  her  friend,  left  the 
house  in  Watertown,  although  often  hav- 


ANNE   WHITNEY  59 

ing  occasion  to  visit  the  studio  that  her 
brother  built  for  her  there,  —  her  brother 
who  believed  in  her  genius  and  aided  its 
development  by  all  the  means  in  his 
power,  —  and  took  a  spacious  house  on 
Mt.  Vernon  Street  in  Boston.  This 
overflowed  with  books  and  music  and 
flowers  and  rare  and  beautiful  objects 
of  art,  a  house  of  generous  hospitality 
and  unbounded  benignity,  in  which  the 
guest  found  every  room  the  Cham- 
ber of  Peace.  In  her  large  studio,  on 
the  top  floor,  overlooking  old  Boston, 
she  was  often  good  enough  to  admit 
her  friends,  and  they  could  watch  her 
work,  or  wander  round  among  the 
masques  and  reliefs,  the  model  of  Garri- 
son in  his  chair,  of  the  young  hero  Shaw 
riding  into  death,  of  Shakespeare  dream- 
ing against  the  garden-wall  in  the  sun, 
the  last  a  thing  beautiful  beyond  belief. 
The  wall  has  various  symbols  and  figures 
scrawled  upon  it  from  the  "Midsummer 
Night's  Dream",  visible  expressions  of 


60  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

the  poet's  thought,  and  the  smile  on 
Shakespeare's  face  as  the  antics  of  his 
forest  crew  occur  to  him,  is  ineffable. 
She  was  never  quite  satisfied  with  this, 
and  it  remained  unfinished.  She  gave  it 
as  it  was  to  Olive  Dargan,  who  in  the 
last  years  of  her  life  was  her  comfort  and 
joy. 

But  Anne  Whitney  loved  great  space 
and  light,  and  one  day  the  altar-gods 
were  moved  to  the  Charlesgate,  and  a 
double  apartment  on  the  top  floor,  with 
a  studio  over  it,  gave  them  shelter.  There 
she  overlooked  all  the  shine  and  glory  of 
the  river  Charles,  a  great  sky  and  a  land- 
scape reaching  to  distant  hills.  The 
large  rooms  were  filled  with  rare  and 
beautiful  things,  and  they  held  such  an 
atmosphere  of  peace  and  delight  that  it 
was  like  receiving  a  benediction  to  enter 
them.  She  entertained  generously  there, 
and  one  was  always  sure  of  meeting 
delightful  people;  genius  was  not  more 
welcome  than  goodness.  Not  the  least 


ANNE   WHITNEY  61 

of  the  delightful  ones  was  her  sister 
Sarah,  a  little  lady,  crippled  with  rheu- 
matism, who  lived  in  a  sort  of  holy  peace, 
and  was  not  any  lower  than  the  angels. 
Her  death  was  simply  going  home. 

Indeed,  the  various  phases  of  what 
we  call  goodness,  among  which  is  con- 
cern in  public  welfare,  interested  Anne  in 
her  later  life  as  warmly  as  art  did,  per- 
haps more.  She  was  an  active  aboli- 
tionist from  her  youth,  a  suffragist  from 
the  beginning,  a  worker  in  the  cause  of 
womankind;  and  in  the  last  ten  years 
of  her  life,  although  not  accepting  social- 
ism altogether,  she  was  yet  largely 
prejudiced  in  its  favor.  Adeline  Man- 
ning, her  other  self  and  second  conscience, 
gentle  as  a  moonbeam,  yet  firm  as  a  rock, 
upheld  her  in  all  this.  It  was  pleasanter 
to  them  to  spend  their  money  in  printing 
and  distributing  pamphlets  concerning 
the  causes  they  wished  to  advance  for 
the  healing  of  the  nations,  than  to  have 
opera  tickets  for  a  season.  When  once 


62  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

I  had  persuaded  them  to  hear  the  Gotter- 
dammerung,  they  looked  at  me  with  re- 
proachful eyes  as  if  I  had  urged  them  to 
commit  a  sin.  None  the  less  they  heard 
a  great  deal  of  the  best  music,  and  saw 
all  the  great  players,  and  heard  the  best 
speakers;  but  it  was  on  occasion,  and 
often  the  singers  and  artists  came  to 
them.  But  there  was  nothing  of  the 
ascetic  about  them;  they  enjoyed  life, 
lived  comfortably,  and  dressed  richly, 
yet  somewhat  after  a  fashion  of  their 
own.  Miss  Whitney's  distinction  showed 
through  every  movement.  When  she 
lay  asleep  in  her  last  illness,  she  looked 
like  the  recumbent  statue  of  some  god- 
dess. In  fact,  nobility  was  the  type  of 
her  beauty  and  of  her  being.  She  was 
of  a  large  and  open-handed  generosity. 
When,  after  her  brother's  death,  she 
lost  a  good  part  of  her  income  through 
the  misbehavior  of  his  agent,  her  regret 
was  much  more  because  she  could  not  give 
the  large  sums  she  had  been  in  the  habit 


ANNE   WHITNEY  63 

of  giving  than  for  any  loss  of  her  own. 
One  never  came  into  her  presence  with- 
out feeling  a  certain  sense  of  exaltation. 
There  was  no  air  of  superiority,  no  assump- 
tion of  genius ;  it  was  as  if  one  breathed 
with  her  in  a  finer,  purer  atmosphere. 

The  unexpected  death  of  Adeline  after 
a  brief  illness  was  a  terrible  shock  and 
sorrow  to  Anne,  and  she  was  long  in 
recovering  her  poise.  For  a  few  sum- 
mers she  did  not  go  to  her  farm  in 
Shelburne,  where  she  managed  many 
acres  of  rich  intervale  land  beside  the 
swift  Androscoggin,  so  remote  and  hushed 
that  when  the  train  throbbed  up  at 
night  through  the  echoing  hills  it  seemed 
like  a  messenger  from  some  outer  world. 
It  was  the  spot  that  Starr  King  declared 
the  very  choicest  of  the  White  Moun- 
tains, where  the  long,  outlying  ranges 
suddenly  open,  and  Madison,  Washing- 
ton, and  Adams  rise  in  purple  majesty 
and  make  day  royal  and  night  mystical 
with  their  vast  altars  smoking  to  heaven, 


64  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

and  where  she  seemed  to  be  in  her  own 
region.  There  she  raised  her  crops,  had 
her  cows,  her  garden,  her  hill-climbing, 
her  hermit  thrush,  and  made  such  happy 
excursions  as  that  of  one  day  up  the 
side  of  Mt.  Randolph,  where  as  we 
sat  on  the  turf,  lunching  and  looking 
across  the  deep  valley  into  the  dark 
caves  and  dells  of  the  forests  of  Mt. 
Adams,  as  if  to  lift  the  spell  of  solemnity 
and  lighten  the  moment,  she  repeated 
the  "Brides  of  Quair." 

Instead  of  renewing  the  heart-piercing 
memories  of  the  past  in  Shelburne,  she 
accepted  the  hospitality  of  a  cottage  on 
the  estate  of  her  cousin,  Mr.  Charles  A. 
Stone,  in  Plymouth,  where  for  several 
seasons  she  had  the  great  solace  of  the 
sea.  Before  her  death,  Mr.  Stone  bought 
from  her  the  Shelburne  estate,  and  is  now 
planning  to  make  of  the  house  on  the 
Knoll,  where  with  her  choicest  friends  she 
passed  the  long  summer  days,  a  memorial 
to  her,  a  beautiful  thing  to  do,  and  a  be- 


ANNE   WHITNEY  65 

neficence  to  those  that  will  travel  to  it  as 
to  a  shrine. 

It  was  an  unspeakable  blessing  that 
when  she  was  left  alone,  Olive  Dar- 
gan,  herself  a  poet  whose  work  has 
the  Shakespearean  phrase,  came  with 
her  grace  and  strength  and  sympathy, 
her  sweet  and  helpful  nature,  her  high- 
minded  habit,  interested  in  the  same 
questions,  trying  to  solve  the  same  prob- 
lems, finally  abiding  with  her  altogether, 
and  making  her  as  happy  as  anyone  can 
be  who  has  reached  ninety  years.  Not 
that  Anne  Whitney  ever  manifested  her 
age  either  physically  or  mentally ;  at 
ninety  she  walked  for  miles,  and  she  kept 
abreast  of  the  age;  she  was  young  in 
feeling  and  in  thought,  with  a  sort  of 
immortal  youth.  "Age  cannot  wither 
her,  nor  custom  stale  her  infinite  variety." 

Yet  all  the  time,  while  one  feels  blest 
in  verse  or  marble,  one  is  aware  that 
Anne  Whitney  herself  was  still  finer 
than  her  work,  or  than  any  work.  There 


66  ANNE   WHITNEY 

was  grandeur  in  the  directness  of  her 
character,  in  the  utter  absence  of  self- 
assertion,  in  her  love  of  her  kind,  in  her 
boundless  benevolence  of  word  and  deed 
and  interpretation,  her  belief  in  good, 
her  constant  action  in  accord  with  the 
forces  that  work  for  righteousness,  in 
her  fearless  truth,  that  was  so  intense 
a  lie  would  shrivel  before  it,  in  her  rapt 
single -mindedness,  in  the  glow  of  her 
genius  that  penetrated  to  the  inner 
beauty  of  all  things  and  transmuted 
it  to  the  possibilities  of  common  eyes. 
With  all  this,  a  great  artist,  a  great 
poet,  a  great  woman,  and  always  a  beauti- 
ful one,  something  for  the  whole  race  to 
rejoice  in,  she  was  as  sweet  and  simple 
as  a  child,  as  lovable,  as  willful  withal, 
and  as  imperious. 


IV 

CELIA  THAXTER 

APPLEDORE  and  Haley's,  Cedar  and 
Malagar,  White  and  Seavey's,  Star  and 
Duck,  Shag  and  Mingo  Rocks  and  Lon- 
doners, the  Devil's  Rock,  Anderson's, 
Square  Rock,  and  the  Old  Harry,  a  few 
acres  of  trap  and  granite  and  a  handful 
of  soil,  hurling  the  spray  from  one  to 
another  and  breasting  the  whole  force 
of  the  Atlantic  surge,  make  up  the 
Isles  of  Shoals,  off  the  coast  of  Maine, 
where  Celia  Thaxter  passed  the  greater 
part  of  her  life,  a  life  fed  with  the  wild 
wonder  of  sea  and  sky  and  transfigured 
rock,  the  multitudinous  phases  of  color, 
and  the  equally  multitudinous  phases 
of  emotion. 


68  A    LITTLE    BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

In  all  our  literature  she  is  the  most 
picturesque  figure.  A  singular  charm 
surrounded  her  and  was  a  part  of  her, 
the  charm  of  shoreless,  sea-dewed  morn- 
ings fresh  from  God,  of  winds  and  wel- 
tering waters,  of  boundless  horizons,  and 
a  free,  wide,  lonely  sphere  that  seems 
to  swing  in  space  apart  from  other 
spheres,  a  region  where,  when  one  wakes 
in  a  summer  morning,  one  fancies  the 
morning  made  for  the  first  time,  she 
says,  the  world  like  a  rose  new-blown, 
"with  only  the  caressing  music  of  the 
water  to  break  the  utter  silence,  unless, 
perhaps,  a  song-sparrow  pours  out  its 
blissful  warble  like  an  unbodied  joy. 
The  sea  is  song,  and  the  sky;  the  line 
of  land  is  radiant;  the  scattered  sails 
glow  with  the  delicious  color  that  touches 
so  tenderly  the  bare,  black  rocks."  Here, 
in  her  early  childhood,  she  came,  —  with 
her  brothers,  her  mother,  and  that  mighty 
man,  her  father,  who,  disaffected  with 
men,  was  to  be  the  keeper  of  the  White 


CELIA    THAXTER  69 

Island  light.  Later  they  moved  to  Apple- 
dore,  where  first  one  and  then  another 
came,  drawn  by  rumor  of  its  solitude 
and  charm,  —  Levi  Thaxter  to  practice 
his  voice  in  the  great  open  spaces  and 
to  marry  the  young  girl  out  of  hand, 
then  James  Russell  Lowell,  Wentworth 
Higginson,  and  others,  until  at  last  a 
great  hotel  was  opened  there.  On  this 
island  Celia  spent  every  summer  and 
many  a  winter  of  her  life,  as  much  a 
thing  of  delight  herself  as  any  other 
that  the  islands  have. 

What  scenes  to  fire  a  poet's  fancy  did 
the  place  afford  her !  The  storms,  the 
calms,  filled  her  with  great  emotions, 
the  pathetic  life  of  the  fishing-people, 
their  loneliness,  their  dangers,  their  sor- 
rows, their  splendid  strength  and  brown 
and  ruddy  tints  of  weather,  their  daring 
youth,  their  dreary  age;  the  terror  of 
the  wrecks,  breathless  suspenses  of  the 
gales ;  the  wistful  watching  for  a  sail ; 
the  pensive  beauty  of  the  fog  "clinging 


70  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

in  silver  strips  to  the  dark,  wet  sails  of 
vessels  lying  becalmed,  when  all  the  air 
about  was  clear  and  free  from  mist"; 
the  ghastly  horror  of  such  visions  as 
that  of  the  vessel  of  the  castaways,  in 
the  glare  of  the  winter  sunshine,  "still 
with  all  sail  set,  standing  upright  upon 
the  ledge  —  a  white  column  looming 
far  away";  the  herring-net  drawn  in 
by  moonlight,  where,  as  she  mentions, 
every  fish  hangs  like  a  long  silver  drop 
from  the  close-set  meshes,  knowing  more 
of  it,  perhaps,  than  Allingham  did  when 
he  half  wished 

"To  hand  a  pilot's  oar  and  sail, 
Or  haul  the  dripping  moonlight  mesh  spangled 
with  herring  scale." 

Then  there  were  too,  day  after  day, 
year  after  year,  the  common  sights 
of  the  sea  over  the  boatside,  —  strange, 
beautiful  fishes,  such  as  the  baby  scul- 
pin,  "a  fairy  creature,  the  color  of  a 
blush-rose,  striped  and  freaked  and  pied 
with  silver  and  gleaming  green,  hanging 


CELIA    THAXTER  71 

in  the  almost  invisible  water  as  a  bird 
in  air,  with  broad,  transparent  fins, 
suffused  with  a  faint  pink,  stretched 
inside  like  wings  to  upbear  the  supple 
form";  or  the  wondrous  phosphores- 
cence where,  with  her  finger,  she  writes 
her  thought  in  fire  along  the  dark  wet 
rocks.  "There  had  been  much  talk  and 
song  and  laughter,"  she  mentions  once, 
"much  playing  with  the  warm  waves, 
(or  rather  smooth  undulation  of  the  sea, 
for  there  was  not  a  breath  of  wind  to 
make  a  ripple),  which  broke  at  a  touch 
into  pale-green  phosphorescent  fire. 
Beautiful  arms,  made  bare  to  the  shoulder, 
thrust  down  into  the  liquid  darkness, 
shone  flaming  silver  and  gold,  from  the 
fingers  playing  beneath  fire  seemed  to 
stream ;  emerald  sparks  clung  to  the 
damp  draperies,  and  a  splashing  oar- 
blade  half  revealed  sweet  faces  and  bright 
young  eyes.  Suddenly  a  pause  came 
in  talk  and  song  and  laughter;  and  in 
the  unaccustomed  silence  we  seemed  to 


72  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

be  waiting  for  something.  At  once  out 
of  the  darkness  came  a  slow,  tremendous 
sigh  that  made  us  shiver  in  the  soft  air, 
as  if  all  the  woe  and  terror  of  the  sea 
were  condensed  in  that  immense  and 
awful  breath,  and  we  took  our  oars 
and  pulled  homeward  with  the  weird 
fires  flashing  from  our  bows  and  oar- 
blades.  'Only  a  porpoise  blowing,'  said 
the  initiated,  when  we  told  our  tale." 

Here  too,  to  the  outdoor  child,  came 
the  spectacle  of  northern  lights  casting 
their  films  across  the  stars  and  flaring 
out  of  the  winter  darkness  as  nowhere 
else  short  of  the  great  arctic  circle,  "  the 
sky  at  midnight  crimson  and  emerald 
and  orange  and  blue  in  palpitating  sheets 
along  the  whole  northern  half  of  the 
heavens,  or  rosy  to  the  zenith,  or  belted 
with  a  bar  of  solid  yellow  light  from  east  to 
west,  as  if  the  world  were  a  basket  and  it 
the  golden  handle."  All  this  beauty  she 
has  immortalized  in  her  little  book  "The 
Isles  of  Shoals ' ' ,  which  has  become  a  classic. 


CELIA    THAXTER  73 

What  experiences  were  hers,  moreover, 
in  the  appalling  gales  that  have  blown 
the  sea  in  a  breach  across  Appledore, 
Old  Harry  tossing  the  far-off  breakers 
sky-high,  and  the  near  waves  plunging 
in  a  maddened  troop  of  giants,  white 
as  milk,  sweeping  all  before  them,  the 
spray  bursting  in  flying  clouds  overhead, 
and  for  many  days  after  the  sun  shone 
and  the  sky  was  blue  again  the  spray 
still  leaping  in  far-reaching  shafts  of 
snow.  It  was  wonderful  to  wake,  she 
tells  us,  "on  some  midsummer  morn- 
ing and  find  the  sea  gray-green  like  trans- 
lucent chrysoprase,  and  the  somewhat 
stormy  sunrise  painting  the  sails  bright 
flame-color  as  they  flew  before  the  warm 
wild  wind."  Lovely  hours  were  hers 
high  in  a  crevice  of  the  rock  on  sunny  after- 
noons after  storm  with  a  sunlit  clash  of 
breakers  far  below,  the  vast  rainbow  shift- 
ing and  vanishing,  the  fine  salt  breath  of  the 
brine  streaming  about  her,  the  great  gulls 
soaring  and  flashing  in  fathomless  blue. 


74  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

With  these  sights  and  sounds  and 
thoughts  by  day  and  night,  what  should 
come  but  song?  "Infinite  variety  of 
beauty  always  awaited  me,"  she  said, 
"and  filled  me  with  an  absorbing,  in- 
creasing joy,  such  as  makes  the  song- 
sparrow  sing,  —  a  sense  of  perfect  bliss. 
.  .  .  Ever  I  longed  to  speak  these 
things  that  made  life  so  sweet."  And 
speak  she  did,  —  how  sweetly,  how  magi- 
cally, with  what  strength  and  music ! 

And  if  she  saw  pictures,  what  pictures 
she  herself  made,  —  a  little  child  coming 
to  White  Island,  awed  by  all  the  splendor 
of  the  sea,  delighted  by  all  its  unspeak- 
able variety,  launching  her  fleets  of 
mussel  shells  in  the  still  pools  among 
the  rocks,  running  along  the  beach  under 
the  banner  of  the  broken  bough  that 
had  drifted  ashore,  woven  in  and  out 
with  the  long,  shining  ribbon-grass  that 
streamed  trembling  on  the  wind,  calling 
the  loons  about  her  as  she  imitated  their 
cries,  then  laughing  to  see  them  come, 


CELIA   THAXTER  75 

and  chilled  to  the  marrow  by  their 
unearthly,  answering  laugh,  or  at  their 
long,  shuddering  cries  before  a  storm. 
Here  she  danced  after  the  sandpiper 
at  the  edge  of  the  foam,  the  sandpiper 
of  whom  later  she  sang : 

"I  watch  him  as  he  skims  along 

Uttering  his  sweet  and  mournful  cry, 
He  starts  not  at  my  fitful  song 

Or  flash  of  fluttering  drapery. 
He  has  no  thought  of  any  wrong, 

He  scans  me  with  a  fearless  eye, 
Staunch  friends  are  we,  well-tried  and  strong, 

The  little  sandpiper  and  I. 

"Comrade,  where  wilt  thou  be  to-night 

When  the  loosed  storm  breaks  furiously  ? 
My  driftwood  fire  will  burn  so  bright ! 

To  what  warm  shelter  canst  thou  fly  ? 
I  do  not  fear  for  thee,  though  wroth 

The  tempest  rushes  through  the  sky, 
For  are  not  we  God's  children  both, 

Thou,  little  sandpiper,  and  I  ?  " 

Sarah  Orne  Jewett's  pet  name  for  her 
was  Sandpiper. 

Here  she  watched  the  lighting  of  the 
lamps  that  swing  their  rays  out  ruby 


76  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

and  gold  over  the  water,  or  she  kindled 
them  herself,  "so  little  a  creature  as  I 
might  do  that  much  for  the  great  world  ! " 
she  cried.  And  one  windless  night  in 
June,  when  the  iron  door  of  the  great 
lantern  was  open,  she  was  penetrated 
with  the  sense  of  beauty  in  least  things 
as  a  Luna  moth  glided  in  on  its  long, 
swallow-like  wings  and  sailed  round  the 
lamps,  a  greater  marvel  than  Titania. 
Here  she  sat  with  her  signal  light  on 
moonless  nights,  in  the  slip  that  marked 
the  only  landing  for  her  father's  boat, 
feeling  "so  much  a  part  of  the  Lord's 
universe"  that  she  was  no  more  afraid 
of  the  dark  than  the  winds  and  waves 
are.  Now  her  heart  was  wrung  with 
pity  over  the  sea-birds  dashing  them- 
selves to  death  against  the  light;  now 
she  paled,  listening  to  the  awesome  leg- 
ends of  the  islands,  —  the  old  negress 
seeking  for  buried  treasure  in  the  lonely 
moonlight,  a  weird  figure  with  her  dark, 
eager  face,  her  fluttering  gown  and  her 


CELIA    THAXTER  77 

swaying  divining-rod,  —  or  trembled  to 
hear  of  the  drowning  Spanish  sailors 
in  the  winter  night,  who,  tossed  ashore 
by  the  sea,  threw  themselves  upon  a 
protecting  wall,  but  had  not  strength 
left  to  climb  across,  and  perished  in 
sight  of  fires  and  lights  and  cheer,  coated 
and  crusted  with  the  frozen  spray  of 
the  pursuing  waves.  What  pleasure  a 
lyric  of  Sarah  Orne  Jewett's  gave  Celia 
as  she  thought  of  her  childhood  on  Star 
Island,  and  how  deeply  it  touched  her 
heart ! 

High  on  the  lichened  ledges,  like 

A  lonely  sea-fowl  on  its  perch, 
Blown  by  the  cold  sea  wind,  it  stands, 

The  quaint  forsaken  Gosport  church  ! 

No  sign  is  left  of  all  the  town, 

Except  a  few  forgotten  graves, 
But  to  and  fro  the  white  sails  go 

Slowly  across  the  glittering  waves. 

And  summer  idlers  stray  about, 

With  curious  questions  of  the  lost 
And  vanished  village,  and  its  men 

Whose  boats  by  those  same  waves  were  tossed. 


78  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

I  wonder  if  the  old  church  dreams 
About  its  parish,  and  the  days 

The  fisher-people  came  to  hear 

The  preaching  and  the  songs  of  praise. 

Rough-handed,  bronzed  by  sun  and  wind, 
Heedless  of  fashion,  or  of  creed, 

They  listened  to  the  parson's  words  — 
Their  pilot  heavenward  indeed. 

Their  eyes  on  week-days  sought  the  church, 
Their  surest  land  mark,  and  the  guide 

That  led  them  home  from  far  at  sea 
Until  they  anchored  safe  beside 

The  harbor-bar  that  braved  the  storm 
With  its  resistless  strength  of  stone  — 

These  busy  fishers  all  are  gone, 
The  church  is  standing  here  alone. 

But  still  I  hear  their  voices  strange, 

And  still  I  see  the  people  go 
Over  the  ledges  to  their  homes ; 

The  bent  old  women's  footsteps  slow ; 

The  faithful  parson  stop  to  give 
Some  timely  word  to  one  astray ; 

The  little  children  hurrying  on 
.Together  chattering  of  their  play. 


CELIA   THAXTER  79 

I  know  the  blue  sea  covers  some, 

And  others  in  the  rocky  ground 
Found  narrow  lodgings  for  their  bones, — 

God  grant  their  rest  is  sweet  and  sound  ! 

I  saw  the  worn  rope  idle  hang 

Beside  me  in  the  belfry  brown, 
I  gave  the  bell  a  solemn  toll 

I  rang  the  knell  for  Gosport  town  ! 

Even  in  those  first  days  she  found 
delight  past  words  in  growing  things, 
such  as  the  pimpernel,  the  primrose, 
the  iris.  "I  remember  in  the  spring 
kneeling  on  the  ground  to  seek  the  first 
blades  of  grass  that  pricked  through 
the  soil,  and  bringing  them  into  the 
house  to  study  and  wonder  over,"  she 
says.  "Whence  came  their  color?  How 
did  they  draw  their  sweet,  refreshing 
tint  from  the  brown  earth,  or  the  limpid 
air,  or  the  white  light?"  And  even 
then  she  had  a  scrap  of  garden  where 
only  marigolds  grew,  over  whose  unfold- 
ing, a  little,  half -savage  being  —  gentle 
and  lovely  little  savage  —  she  says  she 


80  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OP   FRIENDS 

knelt  like  a  fire-worshiper.  It  was  the 
beginning  of  a  garden,  the  story  of  whose 
glory  should  be  immortal,  and  of  which 
she  told  but  the  truth  when  writing, 
"The  little  spot  of  earth  at  the  Island 
is  like  a  mass  of  jewels.  Who  shall 
describe  the  pansies  streaked  with  burn- 
ing gold ;  the  dark  velvet  coreopsis  and 
the  nasturtium ;  the  larkspurs,  blue  and 
brilliant  as  lapis  lazuli,  the  ardent  mari- 
golds that  flame  like  mimic  suns?  The 
sweet  peas  are  of  a  deep,  bright  rose- 
color,  and  their  odor  is  like  rich  wine, 
too  sweet  almost  to  be  borne  except 
when  the  pure  fragrance  of  mignonette 
is  added,  —  such  mignonette  as  never 
grows  on  shore.  Why  should  the  pop- 
pies blaze  in  such  imperial  scarlet  ?  What 
quality  is  hidden  in  this  thin  soil  which 
so  transfigures  all  the  familiar  flowers 
with  fresh  beauty?"  At  four  o'clock 
in  the  morning  with  her  maid  she  was 
gathering  and  arranging  the  blossoms 
that  should  cover  table  and  shelf  and 


CELIA   THAXTER  81 

desk  and  make  her  room  a  bower.  It 
is  the  flowers  of  this  garden,  as  well 
as  the  wild  flowers  of  the  island,  of 
which  she  said: 

"The  barren  island  dreams  in  flowers,  while  blow 
The  south-winds,  drawing  haze  o'er  sea  and 

land, 

Yet  the  great  heart  of  ocean  throbbing  slow 
Makes  the  frail  blossoms  vibrate  where  they 
stand." 

These  she  perpetuated  not  only  in  song, 
but  on  panel  and  vase  and  plaque,  dip- 
ping her  pencil  in  the  boundless  reservoir 
of  color  about  her,  with  the  grace  of  the 
breaking  wave  in  her  line ;  and  one  feels 
in  reading  her  prose  or  her  poetry,  in 
looking  at  her  work,  that  she  was  but 
the  human  expression  of  the  beauty  en- 
vironing her. 

Perhaps  it  is  because  her  life  and  situa- 
tion were  so  picturesque  that  whenever 
I  think  of  Celia  Thaxter  I  see  her  as 
if  in  a  series  of  pictures.  Now  it  is  a 
box  of  sweet  peas  from  her  garden  that 


8£  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

she  sends  to  her  friend  on  shore,  the 
flowers  so  arranged  that  as  they  lie  in 
the  box  they  make  one  long  beam  of 
color,  from  deep  crimson  to  pale  pink 
and  snow  white,  as  if  she  had  in  mind 
some  idealization  of  the  long  lighthouse 
ray.  Now  it  is  her  painting  of  an  olive 
branch  with  leaves  and  berries,  that 
Harry  Fenn  brings  back  from  the  Shoals 
with  satisfaction.  Now  it  is  when  she 
gives  the  long  strings  of  the  exquisite 
and  many-colored  tiny  shells  found  on 
Londoners,  and  pierced  and  strung  by 
herself,  tall  and  lithe  in  her  blue  flannel 
boating-dress,  straight  as  the  oar  she 
holds.  Now  it  is  in  a  scene  of  her  ma- 
turer  life,  when,  owing  to  her  mother's 
illness,  she  stayed  all  winter  at  Appledore, 
and  the  household  transformed  the  im- 
mense hotel  dining  room  into  a  living 
room,  facing  south  and  east,  and  barri- 
caded themselves  against  the  northwest 
blasts,  which  had  broken  windows, 
rocked  chimneys,  and  blown  the  fires 


CELIA   THAXTER  83 

out  into  the  room.  At  the  lower  end 
were  assembled  the  range,  the  milk-pans, 
the  kitchen  furnishings,  the  three  Nor- 
wegian maids  with  their  long  yellow 
braids;  one  side  of  the  room  held  the 
secretary  and  desk  and  books  of  one  of 
the  two  sympathetic  brothers,  and  the 
windows,  and  most  of  the  other  side, 
were  filled  with  more  than  a  hundred 
green  and  flowering  plants  cared  for  by 
the  brother  whose  songs  she  sometimes 
published  with  her  own. 

There  were  sofas,  tables,  screens,  and 
various  stoves ;  and  in  the  upper  corner 
were  placed  her  easel  and  desk  and 
piano  and  rugs.  The  whole  life  was  like 
that  of  some  medieval  great  lady  in  castle- 
hall  ;  and  there,  through  any  of  the  four 
glass  doors  and  ten  windows,  Celia 
watched  moonrise  and  sunset,  storms 
sweep  up,  and  snows  fall,  and  for  a 
month  at  a  time,  hemmed  in  by  ice  floes, 
knew  nothing  of  the  outside  world,  while 
the  family  lived  sufficient  unto  themselves. 


84  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

Again  I  see  her  in  her  garden,  a  ma- 
jestic woman  clothed  in  white,  telling 
me  that  she  has  forgotten  all  her  many 
troubles  and  sorrows  in  the  study  of 
theosophy,  and  had  become  a  member 
of  the  parent  society  in  India.  The 
last  time  I  saw  her,  it  was  another  pic- 
ture. We  were  in  a  statuary  gallery. 
The  long  room  was  thronged  with  plaster 
casts  and  busts,  cold  white  statues  and 
reliefs;  and  at  the  farther  end  of  the 
place,  clad  all  in  purple,  a  flush  on  her  sea- 
tanned  face,  she  stood  with  her  golden- 
haired,  ruddy-faced  son,  the  very  im- 
personation of  life  in  contrast  with  those 
still,  dead,  white  things. 

Celia  Thaxter  was  an  altogether  unique 
personality.  No  one  else  in  the  world 
of  letters  had  her  strange  environment, 
her  wonderful  experience.  She  was  a 
poet  in  the  very  depths  of  her  being ;  she 
loved  beauty  intensely,  and  was  satisfied 
with  its  abundance  about  her ;  she  knew 
the  secrets  of  seas  and  skies  and  winds ; 


CELIA    THAXTER  85 

she  was  at  one  with  nature,  and  nature 
made  her  a  confidante.  She  was  very 
attractive  in  appearance,  with  radiant 
countenance  and  brilliant  smile;  every 
one  was  drawn  to  her  by  her  sympathy, 
her  frankness  and  freshness.  At  the 
front  in  books  and  affairs,  her  intelli- 
gence was  surpassed  only  by  her  kind- 
liness. For  many  seasons  she  held  court 
at  the  Shoals  with  authors  and  artists, 
musicians  and  friends.  She  had  many 
troubles,  but  she  also  had  great  joys. 

Out  of  all  this  rare  life,  a  life  impos- 
sible otherwhere,  what  should  come  but 
one  in  youth  sea-burned,  sun-kissed,  as 
supple,  as  graceful,  as  wild  and  sweet 
as  a  sea-nymph  should  have  been,  in  her 
maturer  life  as  fine,  as  free,  as  broad  as 
a  force  of  nature  !  Married  when  hardly 
more  than  a  child,  and  taken  into  the 
life  of  the  extremest  culture  there  is 
among  us,  but  always  returning  to  her 
island,  her  sea,  her  flowers,  finding  the 
deep  new  happiness  that  sang, 


86  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

"Dear  little  head  that  lies  in  calm  content 

Within  the  gracious  hollow  that  God  made 
In  every  human  shoulder,  where  he  meant 
Some  tired  head  for  comfort  should  be  laid," 

a  wife,  a  mother,  a  widow,  she  knew 
every  side  of  life,  its  happiness,  its  suf- 
fering ;  and  she  was  serene  with  a  strength 
that  belongs  only  to  great  natures,  rock- 
rooted  although  thrilled  with  every  vibra- 
tion of  the  world  around,  and  warmed 
and  flushed  with  the  radiance  of  divine 
love. 


GAIL  HAMILTON 

WHAT  a  joyous  time  was  that  in  which 
I  first  knew  Gail  Hamilton  !  We  always 
called  her  Gail,  for  having  first  known  of 
her  by  that  name,  it  became  difficult  to 
use  any  other,  and  she  forgave  it  to  us. 
We  were  young  and  very  happy,  writing 
with  delight  in  our  effort.  She  had  come 
to  see  me  with  Mr.  Derby,  a  publisher, 
and  we  had  passed  a  gay  afternoon. 
She  came  several  times  afterward ;  and 
I  saw  her  again  one  evening  when  Jane 
Andrews  and  I  had  been  invited  to  meet 
her  and  Mr.  Curtis,  the  author  of  the 
"  Potiphar  Papers "  ;  but,  despite  that, 
I  did  not  feel  that  I  had  much  intimacy 
with  her.  There  was  another  time, 


88  A    LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

several  years  later,  when  she  came  to 
see  me  and  my  little  son,  whose  beautiful 
black  eyes  were  pleased  with  her  bright 
face. 

One  day,  at  about  that  time,  having 
heard  that  I  was  engaged  on  a  work  re- 
quiring money,  a  work  she  would  have 
liked  to  do  herself,  had  she  had  the  chance, 
she  sent  me  a  note  saying  so,  and  out 
of  it  fell  a  hundred-dollar  bill.  Of  course 
I  at  once  returned  the  bill  with  affection- 
ate gratitude,  but  I  think  it  was  a  wonder- 
fully kind  thing  for  one  young  writer 
to  do  for  another  —  and  she  had  not  too 
many  hundred-dollar  bills  at  the  time. 
But  Gail  Hamilton  was  always  doing  such 
things.  When  she  began  to  receive  good 
payment  for  her  writings,  she  kept  a 
fund  on  hand  from  which  she  lent  money, 
without  interest,  to  people  to  whom  a  little 
help  meant  a  great  deal;  but  if  at  the 
specified  time  the  loan  were  not  re- 
turned, she  asked  for  it,  quite  compel- 
lingly,  that  she  might  lend  it  to  some 


GAIL   HAMILTON  89 

one  else  in  need.  I  remember  once  that 
an  old  parish  functionary  became  so 
bothered  and  confused  and  alarmed  about 
the  parish  money  that  should  have  been 
in  his  hands  and  was  not,  that  she 
privately  gave  him  the  money  to  make 
the  deficit  good,  sure  that  he  was  only 
the  victim  of  circumstances.  She  was 
generosity  itself;  she  gave  not  only  her 
money,  but  her  time,  her  work,  herself. 
There  never  was  a  more  complex  per- 
sonality than  hers.  Her  people,  pure 
English  stock,  had  been  in  Essex  County 
two  hundred  and  sixty  years  when  she 
was  born,  and  all  their  diverse  charac- 
teristics seemed  to  come  to  blossom  in 
her.  As  a  child  she  was  overflowing 
with  vitality,  full  of  the  joy  of  life,  and 
of  an  astonishing  intellectual  energy.  At 
two  years  she  not  only  recited  verses, 
but  she  knew  the  obligation  of  a  promise. 
Woods  and  fields  and  skies  were  her 
companions,  and  all  her  life  long  they 
gave  her  the  same  happiness  they  did 


90  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

when  she  first  looked  up  and  realized  the 
infinity  of  the  depth  of  the  blue  above 
her. 

In  those  days  the  Congregational 
church  had  much  the  same  authority 
that  it  had  in  the  time  of  the  Puritan. 
It  was  the  center  of  life  and  thought  and 
conversation.  Whatever  the  books  in 
her  father's  house  were,  none  held  her 
attention  as  did  the  Bible,  with  its  high 
inspiration  to  her  faith,  its  tender  prom- 
ises to  her  heart,  and  the  appeal  of 
its  poetical  splendor  to  her  imagination. 
Its  language  was  her  language,  and  she 
could  neither  speak  nor  write  without 
using  it ;  a  rare  scholar  on  many  lines, 
she  valued  her  biblical  knowledge  more 
than  any  other.  She  was  a  member  of 
the  church  at  an  early  age,  and  she  con- 
tinued in  its  communion  till  her  death, 
although  she  grew  widely  liberal  in  her 
interpretation  of  its  creed.  So  strong 
was  this  biblical  influence  that  even  the 
little  garden  of  her  childhood  felt  it, 


GAIL  HAMILTON  91 

this  corner  being  Jericho,  and  that  Caper- 
naum, this  bank  the  Mount  of  Olives, 
and  another  Sinai. 

She  was  educated  at  the  school  of 
the  great-hearted  Mrs.  Cowles  of  Ips- 
wich, where  she  led  her  classes,  greatly 
interesting  Mr.  Cowles,  whose  physical 
blindness  seemed  to  enlarge  his  spiritual 
sight,  and  who  impressed  and  influenced 
the  young  student  to  a  high  degree. 
She  became  then  a  teacher  herself,  first 
in  Ipswich  and  afterwards  at  Hartford, 
a  marvelous  teacher,  awakening  in  her 
pupils  powers  they  did  not  dream  of  and 
new  conceptions  of  life,  striking  a  vital 
spark  from  the  driest  facts  of  study. 
She  began,  while  still  teaching,  to  write 
and  publish  verses  and  short,  crisp, 
epigrammatic  sketches.  The  verses  were 
not  of  much  account,  but  the  sketches 
took  the  public  fancy  at  once.  She  had 
an  irresistible  desire  to  write,  and  signed 
everything  with  a  pseudonym  composed 
of  one  syllable  of  her  own  name,  and  the 


92  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

name  of  her  native  town,  every  sod  of 
which  she  loved. 

She  left  Hartford  to  teach  in  the  family 
of  Doctor  Bailey  in  Washington.  The 
doctor  said  they  had  never  had  anyone 
in  the  house  equal  to  her.  There  she  had 
her  first  introduction  to  the  anti-slavery 
celebrities,  with  whom  she  was  in  full 
sympathy,  and  to  others  of  repute,  and 
found  herself  mingling  in  affairs.  She 
suffered  agonies  of  shyness  at  first;  she 
never  in  all  her  life  could  bear  to  be  looked 
at ;  this  was  partly  because  she  felt  that 
her  appearance  was  made  unlovely  by 
an  accident  that  had  happened  to  one  of 
her  eyes.  But  the  appearance  was  not 
unlovely ;  she  had  an  exquisite  com- 
plexion, her  mouth  was  red  and  sweet, 
her  nose  was  piquant  and  well-cut,  her 
teeth  were  fine,  her  forehead  white,  and 
her  golden-brown  hair  was  abundant 
and  curled  naturally.  She  was  very 
attractive;  and  if  you  had  not  thought 
her  so  at  first,  you  were  sure  of  it  when 


GAIL   HAMILTON  93 

you  left  her  presence  and  ever  afterwards. 
She  had  many  lovers  and  various  and 
persistent  offers  of  marriage. 

She  was  an  ardent  clanswoman ;  every 
one  in  Hamilton  had  her  interest  or 
her  fostering  care,  and  a  relative  of 
any  degree,  was  dear  to  her.  She  loved 
her  immediate  family  with  an  inten- 
sity that  sought  in  every  way  to  pro- 
mote their  happiness,  and  in  return 
they  adored  her.  "Greatest  woman  in 
America"  one  of  her  brothers  used  to 
say.  When,  at  the  age  of  twelve,  she 
was  sent  away  to  school  in  Cambridge, 
she  wrote  constantly  to  those  at  home, 
knowing  how  they  would  miss  the  light 
of  the  house,  and  she  did  the  same 
when  at  Ipswich,  in  spite  of  the  labor  of 
her  studies.  Indeed,  all  her  life  she 
wrote  long  and  delightful  letters  to  the 
various  members  of  her  family,  never 
letting  her  work,  her  political  and  social 
life  —  all  of  which  she  lived  at  high 
pressure  —  interfere  with  the  bulletins 


94  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

that  made  them  sharers  of  her  activities, 
her  acquaintances,  her  pleasures,  her 
triumphs.  She  reported  to  them  the 
praises  she  received,  not  with  any  vanity 
or  conceit,  for  she  had  neither,  but  be- 
cause she  knew  it  would  give  them  more 
pleasure  than  it  gave  her.  And  perhaps 
no  woman  ever  received  more  praise 
than  she  did.  Very  likely  she  naturally 
enjoyed  it,  but  it  never  turned  her 
head  in  the  very  least ;  she  regarded  her- 
self, if  not  exactly  in  the  light  of  a  messen- 
ger, yet  as  having  been  given  a  certain 
thing  to  do ;  and  she  did  it,  whether  it 
was  to  make  happiness  for  others,  to 
reprove  the  sinner  and  afterwards  to 
help  and  bless  him,  or  to  essay  the  re- 
form of  the  church. 

If  she  were  fearlessly  frank,  she  was 
also  tenderly  kind;  her  spirit  was  not 
to  be  daunted,  and  her  clemency  was 
equal  to  her  courage.  Yet  I  have  always 
felt  that  in  spite  of  the  praise  and  flattery 
she  did  receive,  her  recognition  was  in- 


GAIL   HAMILTON  95 

sufficient,  for  her  flashing  humor  so  over- 
lay her  genius  that  except  by  a  few  her 
genius  was  not  fully  appreciated. 

On  Doctor  Bailey's  death,  Gail  returned 
home,  —  although  visiting  Mrs.  Bailey 
at  times,  —  and  there  she  took  up  her 
work  with  energy,  no  longer  hindered 
by  teaching.  She  wrote  sparkling  arti- 
cles for  the  Atlantic,  the  Congregationalist, 
and  other  publications,  maintaining  her 
pseudonym  through  what  she  felt  to 
be  a  principle,  and  answering  no  letters 
concerning  her  work  addressed  to  her  own 
name,  Mary  Abigail  Dodge.  Mr.  Whit- 
tier  once  told  her  it  was  better  her  real 
name  should  be  known,  as  it  might  keep 
her  within  the  bounds  of  good  behavior. 
"Thee  has  great  audacity,"  he  said. 

She  loved  people  and  penetrated  their 
intimate  character,  as  witness  her  descrip- 
tion of  Hawthorne,  when  she  met  him 
in  Boston,  before  visiting  in  his  house: 

"He  is  a  glorious  man,  a  very  ideal  man 
in  his  personal  appearance,  with  an 


96  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

infinite  forehead,  his  gray,  dry,  long 
hair  thrown  back  from  it  in  all  directions, 
deep  lamps  of  eyes  glowing  from  under 
their  heavy  arches,  black  eyebrows  and 
moustache,  a  florid  healthy  face,  —  a 
pure,  sensitive,  reticent,  individual  man 
whom  it  is  enough  to  have  seen,  to  have 
been  in  the  same  house  with.  He  talks 
little,  but  he  talks  extremely  well." 

Of  Doctor  Holmes  she  said :  "  He  is 
as  crisp  and  clear  and  incisive  in  his 
talk  as  in  his  books.  He  is  a  man  who  has 
an  admirable  command  of  all  his  re- 
sources. His  sword  is  two-edged  and 
keen." 

Between  herself  and  Mr.  Whittier  a 
very  tender  and  beautiful  friendship 
existed.  They  visited  each  other,  and 
corresponded,  sometimes  seriously,  but 
oftener  with  amusing  banter.  "I  like 
thee  scolding  and  I  like  thee  smiling, 
and  I  hurl  defiance  at  thee.  Thee  says 
thee  cannot  look  into  Annie  Field's 
face  and  blame  her  for  anything,  but 


GAIL   HAMILTON  97 

thee  makes  up  for  it  the  moment  thee 
looks  in  my  face,"  she  writes  to  him; 
and  he  writes  to  her :  "I  was  a  little  blue 
this  morning,  but  thy  letter  was  just 
the  tonic  I  needed.  If  anybody  is  out 
of  sorts  and  hypped,  I  shall  prescribe  for 
him  a  course  of  thy  letters." 

"The  trouble  with  me,"  she  once  said, 
"is  that  I  like  everybody."  Perhaps 
that  is  the  reason  why  she  liked  flies. 
"As  for  flies,  I  like  them.  I  think  a  fly 
is  real  good  company.  I  spent  a  good 
part  of  one  rainy  Sunday  afternoon 
watching  them.  How  do  you  suppose 
life  presents  itself  to  a  fly  ?  When  they 
get  too  numerous  for  comfort,  we  just 
buy  a  little  poison  paper,  and  death  comes 
to  them  with  no  dread  or  fright,  only  as  a 
fragrant  and  luring  feast  —  a  sweet  in- 
toxication. Oh,  I  wouldn't  give  up  the 
flies  for  anything!"  Possibly  many  of 
us  have  had  the  same  feeling  at  sight  of 
the  first  little  companionable  fly  on  the 
pane  in  spring. 


98  A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

But  interested  as  she  was  in  people,  — 
and  flies,  —  she  cared  for  inanimate  na- 
ture and  the  landscape  even  more,  cared 
for  nature  in  every  form,  as  much  in  the 
great,  white,  whirling  snowstorm  as  in 
the  spring  that  she  saw  underlying  the 
snows.  "Spring  always  seems  to  open 
heaven  to  me,"  she  wrote.  "It  hints 
all  manner  of  hidden  depths  and  half- 
revealed  possibilities,  and  new  creations. 
It  is  vague  and  dreamy  and  eternal. 
Nothing  in  the  fullness  of  summer,  though 
I  love  summer,  so  speaks  of  immortality 
and  the  highest  happiness  as  the  tender- 
ness of  the  early  spring,  —  beauty  bud- 
ding from  grayness  and  roughness,  just 
as  delicate  as  the  sky." 

But  then  she  loved  October  better  still. 
"How  crisp  and  pungent  and  aromatic 
and  warm  this  October  is !  Its  sweet- 
ness is  as  if  all  the  birds  and  flowers  of  all 
the  generations  of  the  summers  had  been 
distilled  into  it.  The  Junes  and  Julys 
are  of  the  earth  earthy.  They  have 


GAIL   HAMILTON  99 

form  and  color  —  they  riot  and  fade,  but 
this  October  is  the  spiritual  substance 
of  the  whole  year.  It  is  not  form,  nor 
fragrance,  nor  color,  but  essence.  Past 
and  future  meet  in  one  rapturous  now, — 
a  now  that  fulfills  more  than  hope  ever 
promised,  and  prophesies  more  than 
thought  ever  dreamed." 

She  returned  to  Washington  several 
times  for  short  and  long  stays,  with  the 
Baileys  and  with  the  Blaines,  and  had 
joyous  seasons  there;  great  men  and 
charming  women  clustered  about  her, 
senators,  cabinet  officers,  diplomats,  the 
titled  Englishmen  of  the  High  Com- 
mission, the  President  himself,  all 
attended  on  her  court,  at  first  enter- 
tained and  delighted  with  her  brilliancy 
and  pleasantness,  and  then  discovering 
her  as  a  woman  of  affairs,  having  her 
part  in  statecraft,  and  of  great  value 
with  her  advice  and  her  work.  Much 
of  this  work  was  in  the  form  of  editorials, 
that  had  an  extraordinary  effect.  It 


100         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

would  be  strange  to  think  of  this  young 
girl  from  a  secluded  hamlet  developed 
into  a  past  master  of  affairs,  not  only  in 
politics  but  in  statesmanship,  fully  in- 
formed, deferred  to,  listened  to,  sought 
after  for  assistance,  if  it  were  not  that 
almost  every  New  England  girl  has  an 
innate  instinct  for  public  affairs. 

In  these  days  she  dressed  royally,  in 
white  silk  and  lace,  peach-bloom  satin,  or 
brocaded  cloth  of  silver,  and  from  her 
old  shyness  she  had  grown  to  perfect 
poise  and  aplomb.  She  was  an  ornament 
to  the  house  of  her  cousin,  Mrs.  Blaine, 
—  a  woman  of  great  intellect  and  wit, 
who  devotedly  upheld  her  husband's 
hands  in  every  way,  not  only  with  com- 
plete understanding,  but  with  counsel, 
with  care,  and  with  the  entire  forgetful- 
ness  of  self  in  which  she  lived  the  life  of 
her  affections. 

Gail  had  another  happy  period  with 
the  Blaine  family,  all  of  whom  loved  her 
and  were  as  much  at  her  feet  as  every  one 


GAIL   HAMILTON  101 

else  was,  when  in  Augusta,  helping  Mr. 
Blaine  collect  and  collate  the  facts  for 
his  book,  "Twenty  Years  in  Congress." 
But  before  this  she  had  been  the  editor 
of  Wood's  Magazine,  together  with 
Mary  Pike  who  wrote  at  one  time  under 
the  signature  of  "Sydney  Hyde",  and 
who,  as  a  young  girl,  had  a  most  inter- 
esting career  at  The  Hague,  where  her 
father  was  the  American  Minister. 

With  all  this  crowded  life,  her  tremen- 
dous interest  in  religion  still  exceeded 
every  other  interest.  She  seemed  to  feel 
it  her  mission  to  arouse  the  church,  and 
a  part  of  the  church  turned  and  rent  her. 
But  she  wrote  on  just  as  eagerly.  She 
declared  herself  quite  useless  in  other 
directions. 

i  "I  never  made  a  pie  in  my  life,"  she 
writes  to  a  friend,  "nor  a  shirt,  nor  a 
loaf  of  cake.  Nor  a  pudding,  to  the  best 
of  my  knowledge  and  belief.  In  fact,  the 
list  of  things  that  I  never  did  and  never 
want  to,  is  sublime  in  its  infinity." 


102         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

Even  after  the  first  bloom  of  youth 
had  gone  she  still  had  the  charm  of  fresh- 
ness. Although  her  curly  hair  silvered, 
yet  she  never  seemed  to  be  growing  old. 
It  is  difficult  to  comprehend,  in  view  of 
her  buoyancy  and  gay  temperament,  how 
she  could  have  said,  "I  can't  tell  you 
with  what  infinite  pity  I  look  back  upon 
the  unspeakable  loneliness  and  bewilder- 
ment of  my  youth."  Nor  can  one  trace 
it  exactly  to  any  fixed  period.  She 
certainly  in  later  life  never  knew  what 
loneliness  or  dissatisfaction  was,  but  after 
all  the  excitements  and  flatteries  of 
Washington,  found  herself  entirely  happy 
in  Hamilton  with  her  adoring  sister 
Augusta,  who,  in  spite  of  a  keen  intelli- 
gence and  dry  humor,  never  showed  for 
what  she  was  worth,  because,  as  a  friend 
said,  "  she  always  stood  round  admiring 
Gail."  When  asked  if  she  were  not  lonely 
in  Hamilton,  Gail  wrote  in  reply  : 

"We  do  have  the  best  of  company. 
Swinburne  has  been  down  here  for  three 


GAIL   HAMILTON  103 

weeks  or  so,  charming  me  with  his 
choruses,  and  Mill  is  always  here  at  call, 
which  is  about  once  a  year.  He  is  a 
great  rest  and  solace  and  hope  to  me. 
I  have  a  call  every  evening  from  Louis 
Napoleon,  but  I  cannot  say  I  find  him 
very  entertaining,  but  he  brings  a  very 
charming  companion,  —  one  About.  In 
fact,  it  would  take  me  a  long  while  just 
to  name  the  people  who  come  to  see  me, 
and  who  talk  their  very  best  in  my 
society." 

To  Miss  Palfrey,  who  wrote  her  that 
she  found  it  a  lonely  thing  to  live  to 
seventy  years,  she  replied : 

"Not  lonely  if  you  could  only  see  and 
feel  the  great  crowd  of  witnesses  who  I 
believe  can  see  and  feel  you,  --  the  best 
beloved  grown  more  loving,  the  clear- 
sighted seeing  now  through  all  the  mists 
and  fogs  of  earth  into  the  very  penetralia 
of  your  love  and  gratitude,  knowing  you 
infinitely  better  than  they  ever  knew  you 
before,  and  longing  to  comfort  you  with 


104         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

their  recognition,  let  alone  all  new  joys 
and  new  purposes,  which  are  to  make 
your  life  go  from  glory  to  glory." 

Elsewhere  Gail  wrote:  "This  life  is 
beautiful  only  so  far  as  it  is  transparent 
and  lets  the  other  upper  ether  through." 
It  certainly  was  transparent  with  her. 

She  had  remodeled  and  refurnished 
the  house  in  Hamilton,  and  made  it  ex- 
ceedingly pleasant,  and  there  she  had 
many  little  companies  of  delightful  and 
distinguished  people,  all  enlivened  by 
Gail's  drollery  and  caprice  and  gayety. 

Once,  when  I  was  in  great  trouble,  she 
came  to  me,  with  her  sister,  for  many 
weeks,  and  if  she  did  not  turn  mourn- 
ing into  joy  she  brought  sunshine  into 
gloom.  She  often  came  afterwards,  and 
filled  the  house  with  the  "inextinguish- 
able laughter  of  the  gods."  Whenever 
she  came,  the  wind  and  the  sun  seemed 
to  come  in  with  her,  so  bright  and 
breezy  was  her  presence. 

She  was  past  fifty,  and  had  just  re- 


GAIL  HAMILTON  105 

covered  from  a  four  months'  siege  of 
bronchitis,  when  what  had  been  the 
dream  of  her  girlhood  was  realized,  and 
she  went  abroad  to  join  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Blaine  and  some  members  of  their  family. 
"We  had  two  days  of  fog,"  she  wrote. 
"You  may  be  sure  I  relegated  the  com- 
mand of  this  vessel  to  no  one  during  those 
two  days.  I  took  charge  myself."  The 
party  traversed  France,  Italy,  and  regions 
of  Germany,  Switzerland,  England,  and 
Scotland. 

Nothing  escaped  her.  She  climbed  Ve- 
suvius in  a  divine  curiosity  looking  down 
the  crater,  with  its  boiling  and  heaving 
commotion.  "It  is  like  seeing  a  world 
in  the  making,"  she  said.  All  the  beauty 
of  cathedral  and  palace  she  made  her 
own,  —  the  home  of  Galileo,  the  paint- 
ings of  the  Uffizi,  the  marbles  of  the 
Vatican,  the  charm  of  Naples,  of  Sorrento, 
the  ineffable  delight  of  Venice,  the  wonder 
and  awe  of  the  Alps,  the  long  landscapes 
of  France,  the  shops  of  Paris,  the  green- 


106         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

ness  of  England  and  the  loveliness  of  her 
homes,  the  mists  of  Scotland.  But  she 
looked  on  everything  from  the  point  of 
view  of  her  entirely  original  personality. 
She  enjoyed  every  moment,  and  especially 
Mr.  Carnegie's  coaching  trip  through 
England,  and  the  life  at  Cluny  Castle. 

One  morning  there  it  was  raining  in 
sheets  and  torrents,  as  if  it  had  never 
rained  before,  and  as  it  was  impossible 
to  fish  or  shoot  or  walk,  it  was  resolved 
to  remain  housed,  and  that  each  in- 
dividual should  do  something  for  the  en- 
tertainment of  all.  Mr.  Carnegie  told 
an  incident  of  his  career  unknown  before ; 
Mr.  Blaine  a  Congressional  incident  that 
once  had  been  a  secret ;  Walter  Damrosch 
played  the  Fire-music ;  and  then  Gail's 
turn  came.  "I  will  show  you,"  she  said, 
"one  of  the  most  satisfactory  and  charm- 
ing things  of  its  sort  you  ever  saw  in 
your  lives,  provided  you  guess  what  it  is  ! " 
They  were  fresh  from  manuscripts  and 
missals  and  marvels  of  book-binding,  from 


GAIL   HAMILTON  107 

old  jewel-work,  and  ivory  triptyches,  and 
Venetian  glass,  —  of  course  they  could 
guess.  They  remembered  the  old  game. 
To  what  kingdom  did  it  belong  ?  To  all. 
Pshaw  !  But  does  it,  for  instance,  belong 
to  the  animal  kingdom?  Of  course. 
But  if  it  belongs  to  all,  it  must  belong 
to  the  vegetable,  too.  Partly !  Oh,  it 
was  an  orchid,  then.  Nothing  of  the 
sort.  But  partly?  Can  a  thing  belong 
to  more  than  one  kingdom  ?  This  thing 
does.  Is  it  in  the  mineral,  then? 
Certainly.  —  All  three  kingdoms !  It 
would  not  be  surprising  if  the  spirit- 
ual were  added.  By  all  means  the 
spiritual.  Has  it  any  color,  possibly 
only  white?  White  in  a  degree.  Or 
pink?  In  some  degree.  It  is  a  chame- 
leon !  Nonsense !  Is  it  large  ?  Not  too 
large.  Tall?  It  reaches  to  the  heart. 
Is  it  the  little  Fra  Angelico  —  the  Sevres 
cup?  One  may  be  brazen,  but  one  is 
not  made  of  gold !  How  did  I  come  by 
it?  That  is  irrelevant;  but  I  stood  in 


108         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

great  awe  of  the  people  who  put  it  in 
my  hands.  It  is  a  rosary  blessed  by  the 
Pope.  No  ?  Then  it  must  be  that  won- 
derful illuminated  Bible.  No,  my  own 
Bible  is  full  of  illumination.  And  so 
the  guessing  went  on.  A  great  financier, 
a  great  statesman,  a  great  musician,  to 
say  nothing  of  others,  and  all  such  poor 
guessers ! 

Out  of  sight  Gail  hurried  and  came 
back  with  her  new  Paris  bonnet  in  hand. 
"Confess,"  she  said,  "y°u  never  saw 
anything  more  satisfactory  in  its  way. 
Here  are  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth, 
as  I  said.  The  silk,  the  plumes  for  one, 
the  wires,  the  pins  for  another,  the  lace, 
the  straw,  for  a  third,  and  as  for  the 
spiritual,  I  trust  the  frame  in  which  I 
shall  wear  that  bonnet  up  the  broad 
aisle  of  the  meeting-house  in  Hamilton 
will  answer  for  it." 

When  the  gayety  had  subsided,  a 
footman  took  the  bonnet  away.  And 
then  the  rain  ceased,  the  sun  came  out, 


GAIL  HAMILTON  109 

and  all  dispersed  on  their  various  errands. 
When  at  night  dinner  was  announced, 
and  the  party  went  out,  preceded  by  the 
gillies  blowing  the  Scottish  tunes  on 
their  pipes  as  they  puffed  and  swayed 
down  the  gallery  and  to  the  castle  dining 
hall,  there  on  the  top  of  the  epergne 
on  the  dinner  table,  above  the  blaze  of 
gold  and  silver  and  crystal,  above  the 
flowers,  the  fruit,  the  *  frolic  wine',  like  a 
bouquet  of  flowers,  perched  Gail's  lovely 
Paris  bonnet,  the  chief  ornament  of  the 
lairds'  dinner  table. 

After  her  return  from  Europe  and  a 
happy  season  at  home,  she  was  again  in 
Washington,  and  on  this  visit  she  had 
her  celebrated  Bible  Class.  Mr.  Elaine 
was  then  Secretary  of  State,  adding 
luster  to  the  high  office,  and  Mrs.  Elaine, 
nearly  heartbroken  through  the  death 
of  her  oldest  son  and  daughter,  yet  still 
seeking  for  the  truth,  gave  her  drawing- 
room  for  the  class.  The  wife  of  the 
President,  the  wife  of  the  Vice-presi- 


110         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

dent,  "  both  houses  of  Congress,  the 
circles  of  science,  of  literature,  of  educa- 
tion, of  diplomacy,  sent  their  delegates. 
Presbyterianism,  Congregationalism,  Uni- 
tarianism,  Episcopacy,  were  ably  and 
amiably  represented,  and  never  more 
agreeably  than  when,  in  Horatian  phrase, 
beautiful  daughters  came  with  their  more 
beautiful  mothers.  The  English  church 
and  the  Greek  church  bent  to  each  other 
with  stately  courtesy.  The  Quaker  faith 
was  there,  robed  according  to  the  last 
dainty  imported  touch  of  the  children 
of  this  world,  but  with  all  the  gentle 
aspect  and  saintly  bearing  of  George 
Fox  and  the  Whittiers,  brother  and 
sister.  Ignatius  Loyola  and  Jonathan 
Edwards  sat  side  by  side  in  French 
costume  of  faultless  cut  and  wonderful 
combination ;  and  one  had  danced  no 
more  lightly  or  deeply  into  Saturday 
night  than  the  other.  Young  Radicalism 
found  the  texts  for  old  Orthodoxy; 
and  both  smiled  approval  whenever  the 


GAIL  HAMILTON  111 

sword  of  the  Spirit  slipped  in  between  the 
loosened  joints  of  Error's  gaping  armor. 
All  came  together,  not  to  advocate  any 
theory  or  repel  any  doctrine  whatever, 
but  to  learn  for  themselves  what  the 
Bible  teaches."  The  rest  of  Gail's  ac- 
count of  this  marvelous  gathering  is  one 
of  the  wittiest  and  pleasantest  recitals 
that  I  know. 

And  then,  in  the  middle  of  his  splendid 
work  of  uniting  all  the  Americas,  Mr. 
Elaine's  great  career  was  ended.  Gail's 
affection  for  him  had  been  deep  and  her 
faith  in  him  was  unbounded.  She  wrote 
to  him  once,  "Blessed  are  you  whom  men 
reviled  and  persecuted  and  said  all 
manner  of  evil  against  falsely  for  His 
name's  sake  —  because  you  stood  alone 
upright  when  the  others  bent  before  the 
blast,  because  in  the  Credit  Mobilier 
you  not  only  had  not  taken,  but  testified 
that  you  attached  no  blame  to  Oakes 
Ames  in  the  proffer  —  when  others  would 
have  made  him  a  scapegoat,  you 


A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

claimed  that  he  was  as  innocent  as  any 
other  member  of  the  flock  —  because  in 
the  Little  Rock  and  Fort  Smith  matter 
you  denied  nothing,  never  struck  to  the 
storm,  but  stoutly,  and  defiantly,  and 
splendidly,  and  heaven-wide,  asserted 
your  absolute  right  to  do  exactly  what 
you  did,  —  because  when  the  whole  North 
went  after  President  Hayes,  you  alone  in 
Congress  stood  by  your  faith  as  firmly  as 
before  you  stood  by  moderation  and 
justice  when  the  extremists  wanted  the 
Force  Bill !  Rejoice  and  be  exceeding 
glad,  for  of  such  is  the  Kingdom  of 
heaven,  if  I  have  the  least  glimpse  of  what 
the  prophets  and  apostles  mean."  Since 
she  so  intimately  knew  his  goodness  and 
sweetness  and  courage,  the  real  grandeur 
of  his  nature,  she  was  asked  by  his  family 
to  write  his  biography. 

She  went  then,  with  her  sister,  to  the 
place  of  his  birth,  tracing  his  footsteps, 
gathering  material  and  working  assidu- 
ously, and  with  her  heart  in  her  work,  for 


GAIL  HAMILTON  113 

two  years.  She  had  completed  all  but  the 
last  chapter,  and  was  in  Washington  again, 
when  early  one  morning  she  felt  it  had  be- 
come dark,  and  that  she  was  slowly  sinking 
to  the  floor.  It  was  a  stroke  of  paralysis. 
She  failed  to  rally,  and  it  was  thought 
she  could  not  recover,  every  breath 
seeming  destined  to  be  her  last.  As  the 
publisher  was  in  the  house  clamoring 
for  the  book,  I  was  urged  by  her  sister 
Augusta  and  by  Mrs.  Elaine  to  go  to 
Washington  and  finish  the  chapter,  which 
rather  unwillingly  I  did,  although  it 
was  necessary  to  do  hardly  more  than 
put  her  notes  together.  It  was  a  great 
disappointment  to  Gail,  after  her  re- 
covery, not  to  have  completed  the  work 
herself,  —  although  virtually  she  did  so, 

—  but  she  generously  expressed  her  pleas- 
ure and  satisfaction  in  what  I  had  done. 

I  have  always  thought  that  the  paraly- 
sis was  largely  occasioned  by  the  intensity 
of  her  effort  in  behalf  of  Mrs.  Maybrick, 

—  a  woman  who  was  found  guilty  on 


114         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

slight  evidence,  and  by  a  judge  who 
became  insane  shortly  after,  if  indeed, 
as  it  has  been  thought,  he  was  not  already 
so,  of  administering  arsenic  to  her 
husband,  who  had  been  for  years  a  con- 
firmed arsenic-eater.  Gail  moved  heaven 
and  earth  in  behalf  of  the  unfortunate 
lady,  with  petitions  signed  by  the  lead- 
ing women  of  this  country,  by  inter- 
views with  Supreme  Court  Justices,  by 
addresses  to  the  Queen,  and  by  incessant 
correspondence  with  people  of  authority, 
and  it  is  more  than  probable  that  the 
feverish  interest  and  work  wrought  her 
great  injury. 

After  many  weeks  she  was  able  to  be 
moved  to  Hamilton,  and  there,  to  the 
surprise  of  all,  she  regained  health  and 
strength  enough  to  write  and  herself 
publish  the  small  book  entitled  "X 
Rays",  in  which  she  recounted  her  spir- 
itual experience  during  the  time  she  lay 
unconscious  and,  as  it  were,  between 
two  worlds.  She  had  a  year  and  a  half 


GAIL   HAMILTON  115 

of  much  happiness,  surrounded  by  friends, 
with  her  mind  clear  and  strong.  Then 
suddenly  one  morning  the  summons  came, 
and,  after  a  few  hours  of  complete  un- 
consciousness again,  the  great  white  soul 
passed  to  discover  the  truth  she  had  so 
eagerly  sought  here. 


VI 

MARY  LOUISE  BOOTH 

THERE  was  nothing  in  Mary  Booth's 
childhood  and  youth  to  give  promise  of 
the  brilliant  woman  of  the  world  and  of 
business  that  she  became ;  and  there  was 
everything  in  her  studious,  absent-minded, 
and  shy  behavior  to  foretell  the  delicate 
beauty  of  the  poetic  nature  that  made  her 
later  companionship  precious  to  people  of 
scholarship,  of  sentiment,  and  of  genius. 
Wrapped  in  her  books  and  the  thoughts 
and  fancies  they  suggested,  she  seemed 
utterly  unable  to  cope  with  the  matter- 
of-fact  affairs  of  common  life ;  and  even 
after  she  had  attained  her  high  journalis- 
tic position  and  national  fame,  and  by 
her  individual  effort  had  accumulated  a 


118         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

fortune,  her  father  could  never  quite  be- 
lieve her  able  to  take  care  of  herself,  but 
frequently  made  her  presents  of  money, 
lest  she  should  find  herself  needing  it. 

It  was  fortunate  for  her  that  her  father 
was  a  student  and  scholar  himself,  being 
for  the  greater  part  of  his  life  a  teacher, 
and  was  thus  capable  of  overseeing  her 
education,  which  was  of  a  very  complete 
character.  She  was  not  only  conversant 
with  several  of  the  exact  sciences,  but 
was  well  acquainted  with  Latin,  and  was 
mistress  of  the  French,  German,  and 
Italian  languages,  all  of  which  she  spoke 
and  wrote  with  ease.  She  may  have  in- 
herited her  business  talent  from  her 
father,  who  had  so  well  managed  his 
resources  as  to  make  himself  a  man  of 
comfortable  property  before  her  birth, 
and  there  was  never  any  time  in  her 
early  life  when  her  purse  was  not  well 
supplied  by  him.  He  had  an  immense 
pride  in  her;  and  after  she  began  to 
publish,  he  kept  all  her  books  and  every 


MARY   LOUISE   BOOTH  119 

scrap  of  her  writing  as  so  many  treasures. 
There  was  always  a  delightful  comrade- 
ship between  herself  and  her  father. 
"He  is  a  good  and  true  man,"  she  once 
said  of  him  to  me,  "a  real  gentleman  of 
the  old  school,  of  the  Sir  Charles  Grandi- 
son  type,  full  of  high  honor  and  stately 
courtesy,  with  a  heart  open  to  all  who 
need  his  sympathy."  His  death  in  1876 
was  more  than  at  first  she  knew  how  to 
bear.  "I  need  him  every  moment,  and 
feel  that  life  has  lost  its  sweetness  now 
that  he  is  no  longer  here  to  be  pleased 
with  what  I  do,"  she  said. 

But  if  she  inherited  directly  from  her 
father  the  qualities  that  make  for  success, 
her  more  poetical  qualities  perhaps  came 
from  the  same  source  as  that  which  fed 
the  ancestor  who  was  the  companion  of  a 
royal  Stuart  in  his  wanderings,  although 
she  always  claimed  a  heritage  of  French 
esprit  upon  her  mother's  side.  Indeed, 
the  fortunes  of  her  family  before  they 
came  to  this  country,  the  first  owners  of 


120         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

Shelter  Island,  were  always  a  matter  of 
deep  interest  to  her,  and  she  often  used 
for  her  seal  their  arms,  whose  motto, 
Quod  ero  spero,  was  very  characteristic 
of  herself. 

At  the  time  when  Mary  left  school, 
it  was  the  habit  to  think  that  it  was 
ignoble  for  a  girl  to  do  nothing  for  her 
own  support,  and  that  she  must  have 
some  occupation  or  profession  that  should 
make  her  independent.  Sharing  the  sen- 
timent of  the  period,  she  decided,  that 
as  teaching  would  be  unpleasant  to  her, 
she  would  take  care  of  herself  by  means 
of  her  needle.  Nothing  could  have  been 
more  absurd,  as  she  never  sewed  very 
well,  and  was  so  nearsighted  that  she 
scratched  her  nose  every  time  she  drew 
out  her  thread. 

But  in  her  goings  and  comings  it 
happened  that  she  became  familiar  with 
facts  concerning  the  story  of  the  City  of 
New  York,  never  yet  published,  which 
made  her  think  it  worth  while  to  write  a 


MARY   LOUISE    BOOTH 


history  of  the  place.  She  did  so,  and  in  a 
manner  to  win  the  applause  of  the  lead- 
ing historians  of  the  country.  Another 
writer  saw  fit  to  amplify  the  work  later, 
and  appropriated  the  whole  of  the  first 
page  of  this  history  without  either 
acknowledgment  or  quotation  point. 
This,  Miss  Booth's  first  book,  had  a 
great  success,  and  brought  in  handsome 
returns,  and  she  found  herself  in  these 
very  early  years  the  owner  of  a  sub- 
stantial provision,  which  it  delighted  her 
to  display  to  her  father,  and  which  she 
invested  with  sound  judgment. 

She  now  received  flattering  offers  from 
publishers,  and  one  very  tempting  one 
to  go  abroad  and  write  the  histories  of 
certain  of  the  great  European  cities; 
but  the  breaking  out  of  the  Civil  War 
directed  her  attention  elsewhere.  An 
accident,  meanwhile,  had  caused  her  to 
do  some  translating,  and  finding  the  work 
both  agreeable  and  profitable,  she  con- 
tinued it,  and  became  the  leading  trans- 


A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

lator  of  the  day,  publishing  many  volumes 
for  Laboulaye,  Henri  Martin,  Edmond 
About,  and  others,  and  reaping  the  har- 
vest of  a  choice  acquaintance  with  several 
of  the  most  desirable  French  writers. 
She  received  letters  from  Lamennais, 
George  Sand,  the  Count  and  Countess 
Gasparin,  with  cordial  expressions  of 
gratitude  and  warm  invitations  to  France. 
This  led  to  her  great  work  during  the 
War,  at  a  time  when  every  external 
help  was  needed,  and  when  she  brought 
the  whole  force  of  French  sympathy 
to  bear  upon  the  public  mind  at  home. 
She  prepared  one  valuable  work  for  the 
press  in  a  single  week,  allowing  herself 
hardly  three  hours'  sleep  in  the  twenty- 
four;  and  both  Mr.  Sumner  and  Mr. 
Lincoln  wrote  her  in  praise  and  thanks. 

By  this  time  one  of  the  leading  pub- 
lishing firms  of  the  country  had  been 
made  so  well  acquainted  with  her  charac- 
ter and  capacity  that,  wishing  to  estab- 
lish a  new  journal,  they  invited  her  to 


MARY   LOUISE   BOOTH  123 

take  charge  of  it,  which  she  did,  after 
much  hesitation,  her  modesty  as  real 
as  her  power.  As  the  editor  of  Harper's 
Bazar  she  gathered  about  herself  very 
soon  a  corps  of  contributors  of  unrivaled 
talent,  and  made  the  journal  not  only 
valuable  in  the  domestic  arts  and  useful 
in  the  fashions,  but  a  repository  of  belles- 
lettres  that  carried  delightful  reading  to 
every  hearth.  George  William  Curtis 
and  Colonel  Higginson  were  weekly  con- 
tributors, and  Mary  Wilkins'  first  stories 
were  published  there.  Many  of  the  great 
English  writers  of  serials  also  constantly 
appeared  in  the  Bazar.  She  kept  the 
paper  at  high  standard  for  many  years, 
and  only  resigned  its  charge  with  her  life. 
|  Miss  Booth  held  herself  upon  very 
strict  lines  in  her  business  relations. 
She  appeared  at  her  desk  with  perfect 
punctuality,  and  remained  there  as  late 
as  the  latest.  In  the  office  she  was 
entirely  the  business  woman,  firm  and 
masterly,  courageous,  faithful,  patient, 


A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

sagacious.  But  once  at  home,  business 
was  laid  aside  with  the  business  dress,  a 
fresh  toilette  was  made,  and  she  put  on 
lovely  gowns  and  laces,  and  rings  of 
price  on  her  small,  white,  beautiful  hands. 
She  valued  jewels,  India  shawls,  laces, 
and  velvets,  like  any  other  woman,  and 
enjoyed  the  pleasantness  of  her  home 
and  the  affection  of  her  pets  —  various 
canaries,  Fluff  and  Allegretto,  red-birds, 
and  mocking-birds,  Muff,  the  famous 
Maltese  who  sometimes  contributed  a 
mouse  to  the  entertainment  at  her  recep- 
tions, and  who,  when  one  of  the  birds  fell 
dead,  picked  it  up  gently,  carried  it  off, 
and  laid  it  down  by  the  side  of  a  person 
who  had  cared  for  it,  and  Vashti,  a  little 
spirit  of  frolic  and  fury  in  the  shape  of  a 
Persian  cat,  whose  "long  plush  coat  with 
silvery-gray  lights,  blazing  golden  eyes, 
and  feathery  tail,"  were  a  delight  to  her 
mistress. 

Her  home  was  made  possible  to  her  by 
the  companionship  of  Mrs.  Annie  Wright, 


MARY   LOUISE   BOOTH 


a  friend  from  childhood,  who  loved  Mary 
perfectly  and  was  beloved  in  return.  Mrs. 
Wright  was  exceedingly  graceful  and  gra- 
cious in  bearing,  but  of  forceful  character 
as  may  be  known  from  the  fact  that  being 
at  sea  with  her  husband  who  was  captain 
of  the  vessel  and  ill  with  typhoid  fever, 
she  quelled  an  incipient  mutiny,  took 
command  of  the  vessel,  having  studied 
navigation,  and  brought  it  safely  to 
port.  She  lifted  every  care  from  Mary, 
and  all  Mary's  friends  were  hers. 

Every  Saturday  evening  during  the 
winter  Miss  Booth's  parlors  were  thronged 
with  her  friends,  and  every  person  of  in- 
teresting prominence  and  every  stranger 
of  note  was  to  be  seen  there.  Tall  and 
with  much  majesty  of  demeanor,  she 
moved  among  them  like  a  queen;  her 
gray  hair,  rolled  back  over  a  cushion,  be- 
coming her  as  a  crown  would  have  done, 
her  dark-brown  eyes,  the  rose  tint  on  her 
dimpled  cheek,  and  her  beaming  smile, 
all  made  her  beautiful;  and  the  ready 


126         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

bon  mot,  the  witty  and  good-natured  turn 
upon  her  tongue,  made  her  charming. 

She  had  a  great  deal  of  quiet  humor, 
both  in  conversation  and  correspondence. 
Some  one  had  given  to  a  friend  of  hers,  as 
a  curious  coincidence,  the  wedding  cards  of 
a  lady  bearing  the  same  name,  the  cards 
chancing  to  be  of  the  sort  where  the  in- 
dividual cards  of  the  bride  and  groom 
are  inclosed,  with  another  whose  inscrip- 
tion runs  "Married",  with  the  place  and 
date.  Her  friend  abstracted  the  card  of 
the  groom,  and  sent  to  Miss  Booth  those 
bearing  the  bride's  name  and  the  an- 
nouncement of  the  marriage,  together 
with  a  slice  of  wedding  cake,  purchased 
for  the  occasion.  In  return,  Miss  Booth 
sent  a  tiny  box  of  perfume  and  a  couple  of 
toy  chairs  about  an  inch  high,  made  of 
crewels  wound  round  pins  secured  in  a 
bit  of  cork,  accompanied  by  the  following 
letter : 

"  We  beg  to  congratulate  you  on  having  struck 
out  an  entirely  new  path  for  yourself  in  the  way 


MARY   LOUISE   BOOTH 


of  marriage.  R.'s  vaunted  plan  of  going  off  on 
his  wedding  trip  all  alone  by  himself  is  nothing  in 
comparison  to  it.  You  deserve  credit  for  the 
wholly  original  idea  of  ignoring  the  tyrant  man 
altogether  in  your  nuptials,  and  setting  up  as  a 
free  and  independent  unit.  Surely  Miss  Anthony, 
et  al.,  to  say  nothing  of  Abby  Smith  and  her  cows, 
will  rise  up  and  call  you  blessed.  By  your  side, 
Tennyson's  Princess  seems  meek  and  common- 
place, for  even  she  took  a  partner  in  the  end, 
while  you  have  managed  to  dispense  with  such 
an  appendage  as  entirely  superfluous.  You  have 
set  a  shining  example,  which  we  trust  all  the 
maidens  of  New  England  will  make  haste  to 
follow;  certainly,  like  Traddles'  skeletons,  the 
manner  thereof  has  the  advantage  of  being  easy. 

"We  enjoyed  the  wedding-cake  immensely. 
There  was  a  fine  flavor  about  it  that  could  have 
belonged  to  no  wedding-cake  of  the  old  school. 

"And  now  we  hasten  to  lay  at  your  feet  our 
wedding  gifts.  Unconsidered  trifles  though  they 
be,  we  beg  you  will  not  despise  them  in  view  of 
their  significance.  With  a  thought  of  their  utility, 
and  to  aid  in  your  plenishing,  I  send  a  couple  of 
chairs  which,  humble  as  they  seem,  were  made 
by  the  gray  nuns  in  the  Montreal  Convent,  who 
being  wedded,  like  you,  without  a  husband,  — 
or  at  least  a  material  one,  —  ought  to  know  what 
kind  of  furniture  is  required  in  such  a  household 
as  yours  must  needs  be.  I  also  send  you  a  box 


128         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

of  perfume,  straight  from  Constantinople,  of  the 
kind  that  is  used  by  the  Oriental  ladies  who,  if 
married  at  all,  are  so  in  such  a  homoeopathic 
manner  that  it  must  be  considered  as  the  highest 
possible  trituration,  and  nothing  to  speak  of. 
"  Yours  affectionately, 

M.  L.  B." 

All  her  letters  were  charming  with  such 
playful  humor  as  this,  or  with  expres- 
sions of  affection,  recital  of  entertaining 
facts,  criticisms  of  books  and  plays  and 
music  —  she  was  familiar  with  the  best 
music,  passionately  fond  of  opera,  know- 
ing most  of  the  Italian  operas  by  heart  — 
or  with  description  of  her  various  journeys 
with  Mrs.  Wright,  to  the  West,  to  Quebec, 
to  Virginia,  through  the  Tennessee  moun- 
tains, to  New  Orleans,  to  Europe.  She 
particularly  enjoyed  her  visit  to  New 
Orleans,  where  she  was  royally  enter- 
tained by  the  old  Creole  noblesse  of  the 
place. 

Europe  opened  a  new  world  to  her, 
where  she  had  the  delight  of  a  child.  In 
Venice  she  became  engaged  to  a  lover 


MARY   LOUISE   BOOTH 


whom  she  had  several  times  refused, 
but  when  away  from  the  spell  of  the 
dream-city,  the  other  spell  was  broken, 
too. 

While  in  London  intelligence  of  the 
death  of  her  mother  came  with  a  great 
shock  to  Mary,  and  saddened  the  rest 
of  her  stay,  so  that  she  was  thankful 
to  return  home  and  plunge  into  work 
again.  She  remained,  however,  the 
same  delightful,  powerful  spirit,  —  some- 
times cast  down,  sometimes  brightening, 
full  of  stories  of  adventure,  and  entering 
into  all  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  her 
friends.  She  did  a  great  deal  to  advance 
the  interest  of  her  family,  and  indeed  of 
every  one  for  whom  she  cared.  She  had 
an  immense  capacity  for  love  and  sym- 
pathy. 

In  the  winter  of  the  next  year,  she  be- 
gan to  be  troubled  with  a  cough  that 
proved  obstinate,  and  just  as  she  was 
preparing  to  sail  for  the  Bermudas,  hop- 
ing cure  from  the  change  of  temperature, 


130         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

the  heart-trouble  announced  itself,  which, 
after  an  illness  of  six  weeks,  closed  her 
useful  and  lovely  life,  and  left  a  place  in 
the  affections  of  those  that  loved  her  which 
can  never  be  filled.  And  in  a  very  short 
time  Annie  Wright  followed  her,  faithful 
unto  death. 


VII 

JANE  ANDREWS 
LOUISA  STONE  HOPKINS 

WHEN  I  entered  the  Putnam  Free 
School,  at  Newburyport,  —  a  stranger  in 
the  place,  —  two  girls  in  especial  attracted 
my  attention.  One  was  rather  tall,  very 
erect,  a  complexion  of  peaches  and  roses, 
regular  features  and  a  quantity  of  golden 
brown  hair,  a  notable  scholar,  if  not  the 
most  notable  in  the  school.  But,  alas, 
Jane  Andrews  was  in  the  class  before 
mine,  and  sat  with  the  gods.  More- 
over, she  was  reported  to  be  engaged. 
In  those  years  we  did  not  say  engaged 
to  be  married ;  we  never  thought  of 
marriage ;  it  was  enough  to  be  loved ; 
so  romance  surrounded  her. 


132         A    LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

The  other  girl  was  Louisa  Stone,  very 
fair,  with  a  delicate  bloom,  with  light  and 
lustrous  hair  and  a  great  deal  of  it,  and 
with  the  features  of  the  face  on  a  Greek 
coin.  I  did  not  know  Jane  Andrews, 
other  than  as  a  pleasant  acquaintance, 
till  after  she  had  left  school;  but,  because 
of  certain  tastes  and  sympathies,  Louisa 
Stone  and  I  became  friends  at  once,  al- 
though she  was  in  the  class  above  me. 
We  walked  the  halls  together  at  recess, 
reading  Tennyson  and  Shelley  and  Mil- 
ton from  the  same  book;  and  we  went  on 
botanizing  trips ;  in  vacation  we  tramped 
three  miles  to  Plum  Island  to  spend  the 
day  at  the  seaside,  seasoning  our  pilot- 
bread  in  the  surf.  Louisa  was  a  suc- 
cessful student;  and  I  can  see  her  now, 
while  others  amused  themselves,  sitting 
at  the  door  of  the  hall,  in  another  recess, 
calculating  her  eclipses.  With  her  love 
of  poetry,  and  a  deeply  devout  nature 
and  training,  she  had  some  strange  and 
interesting  spiritual  qualities,  a  certain 


JANE   ANDREWS  133 

clairvoyant  power.  I  remember  that  one 
day  after  sunset,  she  had  gone  up-stairs 
with  the  younger  children,  and  was  feel- 
ing drowsy  herself,  when  suddenly  she 
started  and  ran  down,  meeting  Mr. 
Wells,  our  teacher,  at  the  door,  and 
crying,  "Oh,  Mr.  Wells,  I  never  can,  I 
never  can  play  it  before  all  the  school ; 
I  don't  play  well  enough!"  Mr.  Wells 
was  amazed.  A  melodeon  was  to  be 
given  to  the  school,  but  it  had  been  kept 
an  absolute  secret,  to  all  but  the  giver 
and  Mr.  Wells,  and  Mr.  Wells  had  come 
down  to  ask  her  to  play  on  it  at  morning 
devotions. 

After  graduation,  Louisa  went  with 
Jane  Andrews  to  the  State  Normal 
School  in  West  Newton,  half  a  dozen 
miles  from  Boston,  where  their  great 
friend  was  Mary  Mitchell,  the  sister  of 
John  Mitchell,  the  Irish  patriot,  —  "  And 
we  rose  to  read  our  lessons  in  the  violet 
bloom  of  day."  Jane's  sister  Caroline, 
afterwards  the  author  of  "Intimations 


134         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

of  Immortality"  and  of  "Life  in  Puget 
Sound"  was  with  them,  although  attend- 
ing Mrs.  Lowell's  school.  Mr.  Higginson 
once  said  that  Caroline  Andrews  seemed 
to  be  made  fresh  every  morning.  Jenny 
Lind  was  then  at  the  height  of  her  glory, 
and  the  girls  were  so  eager  to  hear  her 
that  they  cut  off  their  beautiful  hair  and 
walked  into  town  to  sell  it  for  enough  to 
buy  tickets  to  one  of  the  concerts ;  but 
on  their  arrival  at  the  place  of  sale,  they 
discovered  that  the  one  who  had  charge 
of  the  parcel  of  golden  locks  had  lost  it 
on  the  way. 

After  finishing  the  course  at  the  State 
Normal  School,  and  after  a  period  of 
teaching  at  the  Putnam  Free  School, 
Louisa  went  away  to  teach,  in  Keene,  in 
Albany,  in  New  Bedford.  Some  years 
later  she  married  Mr.  Hopkins  of  New 
Bedford.  A  more  beautiful  thing  than 
she  when,  like  Helen,  she  "shadowed 
her  beauty  in  white  veils"  on  her  wed- 
ding morning,  these  old  eyes  have  yet 


JANE   ANDREWS  135 

to  see.  I  wore  a  pale  green  silk  that 
morning,  and  every  tear  that  fell  made 
a  blue  spot  on  its  silvery  sheen.  But 
what  has  that  to  do  with  her  ? 

Every  year  she  came  back  with  her 
children,  —  one  of  them  named  for  Jane 
and  me,  —  who  were  musical  and  ar- 
tistic. One  is  the  brilliant  author  of 
"The  Clammer"  and  other  very  original 
work. 

In  the  meantime  the  engagement  of 
Jane  Andrews  had  come  to  naught,  and 
she  went  out  to  Antioch  College,  arriv- 
ing at  the  place  in  black  midnight  and 
not  a  soul  or  a  house  in  sight.  But  ob- 
stacles were  made  only  for  her  to  over- 
come. 

After  a  while  her  health  broke  down, 
and  for  some  years  she  was  a  dweller  in 
sanitariums,  and  lived  in  a  jacket  of 
spiral  wires.  On  regaining  health  and 
strength,  she  had  such  sympathy  for 
those  suffering  from  sick  nerves  that, 
with  the  indulgence  of  her  generous 


136         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

father  and  mother,  she  several  times 
brought  invalided  people  home  and 
herself  nursed  them  to  recovery  or  till 
death  took  them.  One  of  these  patients 
was  David  Wasson,  a  man  of  great  genius. 
When  one  especially  lovely  and  loved 
young  charge  died,  Jane  would  not 
have  a  window  darkened  or  door  closed, 
but  kept  the  house  in  good  cheer,  as  her 
grandfather,  the  old  Unitarian  minister, 
would  have  liked,  and  the  bier  of  the 
young  girl  in  her  sky-blue  gown  was  carried 
down  the  street  without  coffin  or  hearse. 
After  a  few  years,  Jane  opened  a  school 
for  children,  conducted  on  such  original 
and  delightful  lines  that  the  children 
cried  if  by  any  chance  they  were  kept 
away.  "It's  too  bad,"  one  little  mite, 
now  a  University  professor,  cried  at 
table.  'You've  given  father  a  right- 
angle  of  pie  and  me  only  an  acute  angle." 
The  same  little  boy  couldn't  lay  his 
wet  slate  in  his  lap  because  it  would 
take  all  the  fade  out  of  his  gown. 


JANE   ANDREWS  137 

Jane's  sister  Caroline  used  to  lament 
that  she  was  born  before  she  could  go 
to  Jane's  school.  Alice  Stone  Blackwell 
was  under  her  care  for  a  year  or  so,  and 
Jane  foresaw  the  greatness  of  the  woman 
in  the  unusual  child. 

It  was  while  keeping  this  school  that 
Jane  developed  the  idea  of  writing  books 
for  children  that  should  be  unlike  any 
other  books  since  the  dear  days  of  Peter 
Parley.  One  evening,  Louisa  being  at 
home,  a  number  of  us  assembled  in  the 
Andrews'  parlor,  which  always  seemed 
to  all  of  us  a  room  in  the  House  Beauti- 
ful, and  she  read  to  us  "The  Story  of 
the  Seven  Little  Sisters  that  live  on  the 
Round  Ball  that  floats  in  the  Air."  I 
gave  a  copy  of  it,  with  an  inscription,  to 
a  lad  who  said  he  was  "glad  there  were 
no  gols  in  this  family,"  to  his  conver- 
sion. We  all  thought  it  was  a  pretty 
story  enough,  rather  wondering  why  she 
wrote  it.  But  now,  while  most  of 
our  work  lies  forgotten,  Jane's  "Little 


138         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

Sisters"  and  her  "Ten  Boys  who  lived 
from  Long  Ago  till  Now"  and  the  rest, 
are  thumbed  and  rethumbed  by  their 
readers,  and  bring  in  a  good  income  to 
their  owners;  indeed  the  "Ten  Boys", 
one  young  girl  recently  has  assured  me, 
is  the  most  fascinating  book  she  ever 
read. 

After  her  school  was  given  up,  and  an 
old  aunt  came  to  end  her  days  with 
Jane  and  her  sister  Emily,  —  who  was  a 
quite  wonderful  painter  and  got  the 
very  soul  of  the  flower  she  painted,  her 
exquisite  work  having  acclaim  overseas 
as  well  as  at  home,  —  Jane  spent  the  rest 
of  her  life  simply  in  doing  good  deeds. 
Of  the  finest  and  gentlest  instincts, 
absolutely  unselfish,  full  of  resource, 
always  looking  earnestly  for  the  way  to 
help  the  helpless,  adored  by  the  children 
she  had  taught  and  the  myriad  children 
who  were  her  readers,  she  died  far  too 
young,  —  at  fifty,  —  and  left  the  world 
poorer. 


JANE   ANDREWS  139 

Meanwhile  Mrs.  Hopkins  had  re- 
sumed her  teaching,  opening  a  school 
for  her  own  children  to  which  in  course 
of  time  other  children  were  admitted. 
Eventually  she  was  made  one  of  the 
Supervisors  of  the  Boston  Public  Schools, 
and  introduced  and  espoused  many  new 
measures,  such  as  manual  training,  and 
the  abolition  of  corporal  punishment. 
She  wrote  several  books  on  the  subjects 
of  teaching  and  school-work  and  kindred 
matters,  and  published  two  volumes  of 
poems,  "Motherhood",  and  "Breath  of 
the  Field  and  Shore." 

"Motherhood"  was  a  poem  to  be  read 
in  a  sympathetic  and  worshipful  spirit. 
In  the  preface  she  appealed  to  readers 
"to  respect  the  incognito  of  a  poem  which 
was  written  as  an  expression  not  of  in- 
dividual but  of  universal  experience, 
and  from  a  desire  to  portray  in  its  purity 
and  holiness  the  most  beautiful  instinct 
of  humanity."  The  book  met  instant 
acceptance,  and  notices  all  over  the 


140         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

land  were  plaudits.  One  critic  said  of 
one  of  the  poems  that  it  was  of  almost 
Miltonic  strength  and  dignity,  so  pure, 
so  sublimely  heroic,  and  so  infinitely 
touching  that  he  shrank  from  quoting; 
and  all  extolled  its  delicacy  and  beauty. 
The  book  has  been  a  joy  and  help  to 
many  mothers,  exalting  them  in  their 
office. 

In  the  second  volume  such  poems  as 
"Nonquit",  "The  Tender  Love  of  God", 
"The  Secret  of  the  Night",  "The  Salt 
Marshes",  "The  Building  of  the  Tab- 
ernacle", and  "Persephone",  the  song  of 
the  everlasting  spring,  are  poems  that 
deserve  immortality,  because  they  strike 
a  chord  that  must  sound  as  long  as  the 
heart  of  humanity  beats. 

On  Newburyport's  two  hundred  and 
fiftieth  anniversary,  Mrs.  Hopkins  was 
invited  to  write  the  Ode  for  a  part  of 
the  exercises,  and  she  did  so,  reading  it 
herself,  and  adding  beauty  to  the  beau- 
tiful lines.  It  was  a  great  poem  and 


JANE  ANDREWS  141 

was  welcomed  by  Newburyport  people 
far  and  near;  for  the  old  town  is  so 
cosmopolitan  that  from  one  end  of  the 
earth  to  the  other  you  will  fall  in  with 
some  one  from  Newburyport. 

In  her  later  years,  she  endured  much 
suffering;  but  she  always  held  her  spirit 
above  it.  All  her  life  she  was  not  only 
deeply  but  ecstatically  religious  and 
seemed  to  have  a  unique  spiritual  in- 
sight. To  my  great  happiness  she  be- 
came my  neighbor,  having  bought  a 
place  on  the  banks  of  the  Merrimack, 
commanding  charming  views.  She  spent 
several  summers  there  with  her  husband 
and  children,  devoting  the  evenings  to 
music  of  the  rarest,  with  fun  and  pleas- 
antry and  intellectual  enjoyment.  And 
here,  in  the  late  spring  of  1895,  after  a 
brief  illness,  the  culmination  of  long 
disturbance,  she  died.  "Don't  keep  me 
back,"  she  said,  with  her  last  breath,  to 
those  about  her.  "The  gates  of  Heaven 
are  wide  open." 


VIII 

ROSE  TERRY  COOKE 

WITH  what  pleasure  the  circle  of  girls 
of  which  I  was  one  read  Rose  Terry's 
stories  in  the  first  Atlantic  magazines ! 
We  went  across  the  river  to  a  place  of 
woods  and  rejoiced  in  the  Autocrat  and 
*  in  Rose  Terry.  That  we  could  ever 
know  Rose  Terry  and  call  her  Rose 
never  entered  our  heads.  She  was  far 
away  in  upper  skies.  Hers  were  the  first 
of  the  dialect  stories  (although  Mrs. 
Stowe's  were  nearly  of  the  same  period) 
since  the  old  days  of  Judge  Haliburton 
and  of  Seba  Smith ;  and  they  were  of  a 
very  different  order  from  those  earlier 
ones,  not  of  that  type  of  buffoonery,  but 


144         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

transcripts  of  genuine  life,  the  interest 
interwoven  with  pure  wit  and  humor, 
sweetness  and  tenderness.  And  the 
purpose  was  always  high.  The  use  of 
words  was  often  novel  and  striking. 
"The  grasshoppers  chittered  as  if  they 
was  fryin',"  says  a  girl  in  one  of  those 
stories. 

In  another  early  Atlantic  there  was  a 
story  of  hers  in  a  quite  different  line,  — 
the  account  of  a  girl  one  night  in  a  con- 
servatory in  doubt  if  she  should  accept  a 
lover,  and  who  summons  before  her  all 
the  dead  and  gone  women  of  history  with 
their  loves ;  an  exquisite  thing,  full  of 
power  and  the  very  spirit  of  poesy.  It 
had  a  wonderful  effect  upon  us.  But 
the  greater  part  of  Rose  Terry's  work 
was  in  the  study  of  New  England  life. 
One  of  these  studies,  :'The  Deacon's 
Week",  was  reprinted  in  a  little  paper- 
bound  book  by  an  admiring  friend  for 
wider  distribution,  and  was  warmly  wel- 
comed. No  greater  story  of  its  character 


ROSE   TERRY   COOKE  145 

has  ever  been  written  than  "Freedom 
Wheeler's  Controversy  with  God." 

In  person  Rose  was  tall  and  well- 
made;  she  was  distinguished-looking, 
and  would  have  been  beautiful,  with  her 
fine  features,  and  great  black  eyes,  but 
for  too  high  a  forehead.  She  had  an 
irresistible  smile.  When  she  was  talk- 
ing, with  high  spirit  and  ebullient  gayety, 
you  never  thought  how  she  looked; 
you  only  knew  she  was  altogether  de- 
lightful. She  was  very  graceful,  dressed 
modestly  and  in  good  taste,  and  was 
very  fond  of  old  lace;  indeed,  she  loved 
all  beautiful  things. 

I  met  her  first  at  Mary  Booth's,  in  New 
York;  afterwards  she  came  to  me  and 
by  and  by  wrote  a  little  memoir  of  me, 
among  others,  for  a  subscription  book,  for 
which  one  of  my  fond  aunts  gave  her 
incidents  of  my  childhood  that  I  did  not 
know  myself. 

She  had  been  described  to  me  as  living 
with  her  stately  old  father  in  a  stately 


146         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

old  brick  house  in  Hartford,  rather 
stately  herself  and  of  caustic  wit.  I 
myself  never  saw  anything  of  this  stateli- 
ness.  She  was  of  a  rare  friendliness  and 
kindness,  and  if  dignified  always  sweet- 
natured  and  tempering  her  steel  with  com- 
mon sense.  Later  on  she  had  left  the  old 
brick  house  and  was  boarding.  She  was 
extremely  affectionate,  loving  her  little 
nieces  devotedly.  "They  have  been  up 
here  for  a  few  days,"  she  said.  "It  was 
a  glint  of  brightness  that  did  me  good." 
Said  little  Faith,  "If  your  name  is  Wose, 
I  fink  you  is  a  wivvered  wose."  Little 
Faith  grew  up  to  be  a  fair  and  lovely 
white-rose-looking  girl,  studying  art 
in  Boston,  at  the  time  just  before  Rose 
was  dying. 

In  the  house  where  Rose  boarded, 
Mr.  Rollin  Cooke  was  also  a  resident, 
and  his  circumstances  so  excited  her 
pity,  that  pity  which  is  akin  to  love, 
that  finally  she  yielded  to  his  persuasion 
and  became  his  wife,  although  she  was 


ROSE    TERRY   COOKE  147 

very  much  older  than  he.  His  business 
brought  him  frequently  to  Amesbury, 
and  she  usually  came  with  him  and 
stayed  with  us.  Those  were  gala  days. 
"We  love  you  all  so  much  that  it  is 
ridiculous,"  she  wrote.  Mr.  Cooke  was 
devotedly  attached  to  her,  and  thought 
nothing  that  she  did  could  be  bettered. 
He  was  a  very  attractive  and  lovable 
man,  witty  himself  and  the  cause  of  wit 
in  others,  always  interesting  and  always 
good-natured,  and  their  relation  was 
quite  perfect.  "The  praises  he  is  re- 
ceiving," she  wrote,  "are  quite  turning 
his  dear  old  bald  head." 

After  her  marriage,  Rose  lived  in  Win- 
sted,  Connecticut,  going  occasionally  to 
her  friends,  of  whom  Mrs.  Annie  Trum- 
bull  Slosson,  who  survives  her,  was  one. 
Mrs.  Slosson  is  famous  as  an  entomolo- 
gist —  many  a  winged  and  creeping 
thing  being  named  for  her  —  and  fa- 
mous also  as  a  writer  of  wonderfully  orig- 
inal stories  where  an  inspired  imag- 


148         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

ination  and  spirituality  combine  with  a 
quaint  humor.  Rose  was  a  superior  house- 
keeper and  entertained  simply  but  de- 
lightfully. In  Winsted  her  house,  her 
work,  and  her  gardening,  filled  her  time, 
the  last  giving  her  great  pleasure.  She 
was  a  botanist;  and  a  flower  was  to  her 
like  a  person,  having  individuality,  a 
life  of  its  own,  and,  as  you  might  say,  a 
soul.  I  treasured  for  many,  many  years 
a  white  Mabel  Morrison  rosebush  that 
she  gave  me,  of  ineffable  sweetness, 
one  of  the  old-fashioned  kind  that  climb 
to  upper  windows,  and  look  as  if  trained 
by  your  great-grandfather,  whose  mere 
possession,  as  it  has  been  said,  is  like  a 
patent  of  nobility.  Alas,  it  blooms  no 
more. 

Rose's  hospitality  kept  open  house; 
the  place  was  full  of  welcome.  To  a 
friend  in  distress  she  once  wrote:  "If 
you  want  to  run  away  from  every  place 
that  is  haunted  for  you  by  memory  or 
association,  come  here.  Come  any  time, 


ROSE   TERRY   COOKE  149 

with  or  without  warning,  and  feel  as  if 
you  were  coming  home.  There  will  at 
least  be  love  and  welcome  for  you  here 
as  long  as  I  have  a  home." 

When  Rose  was  not  attending  to  her 
house,  was  not  entertaining,  writing,  or 
gardening,  she  was  reading,  and  her 
reading  was  very  varied  and  extensive, 
—  biographies,  histories,  poems,  polem- 
ics, novels.  How  pleased  I  was  when 
in  one  of  her  letters  she  spoke  of  her  de- 
light in  the  pages  of  Elizabeth  Shepard ; 
she  was  joyful  that  I  also  liked  "Coun- 
terparts", and  said,  as  for  her,  she  fairly 
loved  it.  "I  almost  put  it  beside  Charles 
Auchester,  not  quite,  for  it  is  more 
human.  The  other  is  crystallized  and 
supernatural  music;  it  is  heavenly  and 
entrancing  and  makes  one  fall  to  pas- 
sionate longing  for  power  to  bring  out 
that  torturing  minor  music  that  is  like 
a  thirst  for  which  there  is  no  water,  no 
expression.  But  'Counterparts'  is  so 
wise,  so  tremendously  human  and  lov- 


150         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

able."  Poetry  and  romance  were  at  the 
very  root  of  her  being. 

In  quite  another  vein  she  wrote  con- 
cerning Mrs.  Carlyle's  letters.  "I  am 
so  sorry  Carlyle  is  dead.  I  want  so 
mightily  to  give  him  a  piece,  a  large  and 
strong  piece  of  my  mind.  Wretch !  I 
could  do  him  a  mischief  with  intense 
satisfaction.  Poor  dreary,  sweet,  brave, 
unhappy  woman  !  The  book  is  dreadful. 
It  makes  me  ache  to  the  heart." 

When  she  was  familiar,  and  with 
accustomed  friends,  Rose  was  a  marvel 
in  the  way  of  jest  and  anecdote. 
"Laughter,  holding  both  his  sides,"  was 
her  constant  companion.  It  was  to  her 
that  a  delinquent  milkman  said,  on  her 
reproval  of  his  neglect:  "Well,  to  tell 
you  the  truth,  my  wife  died  last  week; 
and  I  don't  know  when  a  little  thing  has 
put  me  so  about!" 

Her  wit  was  sometimes  so  pungent 
(she  renamed  a  person  who  wrote  under 
the  initials  'M.  E.  W.  S.'  the  Tenth 


ROSE    TERRY   COOKE  151 

Muse)  that  on  first  hearing  her  you 
wondered  if  there  were  not  a  gentler 
side  to  her  nature.  But  there  was,  and 
it  was  by  far  the  most  of  her.  She  was 
painfully  tender-hearted ;  every  one's 
woes  were  her  woes.  A  kindness  made 
her  your  friend  forever;  but  she  was 
never  maudlin  or  sentimental. 

Another  side  to  this  many-faceted  na- 
ture was  her  love  of  nature  and  her 
interpretation  and  impersonation  of  it. 
She  loved  her  gardens,  but  she  loved 
wild  nature  more.  From  Glen  Ellis, 
where  she  was  visiting  Mrs.  Slosson, 
she  wrote:  "There  is  a  waterfall  here 
which  'bates  Banagher,'  especially  when 
it  is  mad  with  an  all-night's  pour  of 
summer  rain,  and  comes  roaring,  laugh- 
ing, rushing  and  sparkling  down  the 
great  tilted  granite  steps  of  its  bed  into 
the  cool  green  hollow  below."  Her 
love  of  nature  was  often  accompanied 
by  a  sense  of  spiritual  analogies,  as  one 
springtime  when  "a  green  mist  was  in 


152         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

the  willows,"  she  writes,  "Oh,  why  can 
we  not  renew  our  youth  once  a  year? 
But  when  we  do,  it  will  be  forever  and 
ever.  Never  to  be  old  and  sick  and 
tired,  the  negatives  of  heaven !  What 
must  its  great  affirmations  be!" 

She  was  a  member  of  the  Orthodox 
church  from  her  early  girlhood.  Her 
religion,  however,  was  of  the  quiet  kind, 
something  as  natural  as  the  air  she 
breathed.  She  had  no  doubts ;  she  took 
things  as  they  had  been  given  to  her  at 
first.  To  a  person  happily  married,  yet 
who  had  been  questioning  the  goodness 
of  God,  she  said ;  "Do  you  know  what  a 
gift  you  have  had  in  your  one  life-long 
perfect  fulfilled  love?  And  can  you 
disbelieve  in  God's  goodness  when 
He  has  given  you  such  a  crown?"  The 
time  came  when  this  habit  of  faith  be- 
came an  unfailing  support  to  her. 

Rose  published  only  one  volume  of 
poems,  republished  with  a  few  additions 
nearly  thirty  years  later.  She  must  have 


ROSE   TERRY   COOKE  153 

written  many  more  for  she  wrote  with 
great  facility ;  but  she  was  always  indiffer- 
ent to  fame.  Many  of  the  verses  were 
first  published  in  the  New  York  Tribune, 
signed,  not  with  her  own  name,  but  with 
the  initials  A.  W.  H.  which  were  her 
mother's,  because  her  mother  was  so 
dear  to  her  that  she  wished  to  associate 
her  with  all  she  did.  The  verses  were 
illustrative  of  her  manner  of  thought; 
but  they  were  not  as  fine  and  great  as 
she  was.  Some  of  these  verses  were 
powerful,  —  the  border  ballads ;  others 
were  of  gentle  tenderness  and  beauty, 
betraying  the  inner  sweetness  of  her 
nature,  but  they  were  not  her  strongest 
expression.  The  " Trailing  Arbutus" 
was  an  immediate  favorite  and  was 
widely  copied.  The  book  was  a  success, 
and  gave  her  rank  among  the  poets,  but 
I  always  felt  she  was  finer  and  greater 
in  her  best  prose,  and  I  enjoyed  her  prose 
more.  I  never  told  her  so,  for  I  would 
far  rather  have  let  truth  go  by 


154         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

than  have  hurt  her  feelings.  In  her 
outlook  on  life  she  used  a  singular  com- 
bination of  the  Greek  penetration  to 
the  secret  of  beauty  and  the  matter-of- 
fact  Puritan  realism.  In  herself  she 
was  a  thoroughly  satisfying  and  dear 
person,  sympathetic,  confiding,  and  lov- 
ing, of  brilliant  intelligence,  of  pure 
genius,  and  of  a  superb  moral  upright- 
ness that  was  inherent. 

She  had  some  melancholy  crises  in  her 
life,  not  to  be  rehearsed.  And  she  had 
many  amusing  episodes.  One  of  these 
latter  affairs  was  when  a  young  woman, 
occupying  half  of  her  seat  in  a  railway 
car,  introduced  herself  to  her  as  Rose 
Terry,  and  talked  quite  freely  of  her 
stories  and  of  her  state  of  mind  in  writing 
this  or  that,  and  of  the  praise  and  money 
she  received.  Rose  suffered  her  to  go 
on  without  let  or  hindrance. 

When  Rose  married,  she  had  a  com- 
fortable competence;  but  it  gradually 
became  involved  in  the  business  of  her 


ROSE    TERRY   COOKE  155 

father-in-law  and  her  husband  until  she 
lost  the  whole  of  it,  and  faced  the  neces- 
sity of  going  to  work  again  with  her 
health  ruined.  Her  husband  was  very 
unhappy  about  it,  for  her  sake,  and  was 
thoroughly  discouraged.  "I  hear  him 
sigh  in  his  sleep,"  she  wrote.  It  was 
really  tragical. 

One  of  the  strongest  feelings  Rose  had 
was  her  love  of  her  mother.  She  could 
never  accustom  herself  to  the  fact  that 
her  mother  had  died.  On  waking  in  the 
morning  her  mother  always  seemed  to 
be  in  the  next  room,  and  she  missed  her 
bitterly  every  day.  Once  when  I  asked 
her  where  she  found  her  tropic  streak, 
she  answered,  "My  mother  was  nursed 
by  a  gypsy,  and  in  her  were  the  oddest 
streaks.  Severer  in  her  Puritanism  than 
ever  I  was,  there  was  a  favorable  wild- 
ness  about  her,  a  passion  for  getting  out 
of  doors,  and  in  just  as  little  covering  as 
possible.  I  have  known  her  to  go  out 
in  her  garden,  of  a  summer  day,  with 


156          A   LITTLE   BOOK  OF   FRIENDS 

only  a  scant  skirt  over  her  under-gar- 
ment,  and  a  hat  on  her  head,  and  weed, 
risking  interruption.  The  blood  told. 
She  struggled  to  be  rugged  and  free  and 
out  of  doors,  though  her  habit  was  to 
be  proper  and  shy  and  meek.  It  made 
her  interesting,  though  alarming,  es- 
pecially when  young  men  used  to  be  about 
of  a  summer's  afternoon  and  Alice  and 
I  spied  her,  stealing  out  among  the 
young  trees  to  the  carnation  bed.  Poor 
little  mother  !  '  without  were  fightings, 
within  were  fears,'  for  her  always.  I 
dreamed,  Sunday  night,  that  she  came 
for  me  to  go  home.  I  saw  her  as  plainly 
as  if  I  had  been  awake.  But  when  I 
was  awake,  she  did  not  come."  Per- 
haps the  beloved  little  mother  did  come. 
For  Rose  died  that  year. 


IX 

LOUISE  CHANDLER  MOULTON 

A  TENDER  and  sensitive  little  child, 
born  under  the  rigors  of  the  old  faith, 
who  drew  her  breath  in  trembling,  and 
pattered  out  of  bed  in  the  dark  night, 
and  sought  the  warm  comfort  of  her 
mother's  arms,  because  if  she  were  not 
among  the  elect  it  was  no  use  trying  to 
be  good,  yet  later,  in  girlhood,  in 
womanhood,  in  age,  all  her  life  long, 
Louise  Chandler  Moulton,  even  when 
freed  from  the  bonds  and  restraints  of 
doctrine,  lived  under  the  shadow  they 
cast  upon  her  days.  With  her  strong 
imagination,  she  dreamed  out  to  the  full 
all  the  darkness  involved  in  the  creed  of 
her  parents.  Of  course  there  were  great 


158         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

escapes  into  sunshine,  and  the  natural 
gayety  of  youth  and  health,  and  all  her 
excitements  and  successes  helped  her, 
but  the  gloom  was  always  ready  to  fall. 

If  it  was  not  in  a  way  a  sad  child- 
hood, it  was  a  pitiful  one,  without 
games,  dances,  toys,  or  story-books; 
cards  were  unknown ;  a  pantomime 
would  have  been  something  unheard  of. 
But  for  all  that,  it  was  a  fond  father 
and  mother  who  did  their  best  to  make 
their  child  happy  and  good.  In  the 
meantime  she  created  a  new  world  for 
herself,  began  to  write  verses  at  seven, 
and  had  the  people  of  her  little  un- 
written Spanish  drama  for  companions. 
In  the  main  she  was  happy ;  she  loved 
beauty,  and  had  it  everywhere  about  her. 

I  often  wonder  whence  came  that 
spark  of  genius  that  grew  to  such  a 
steady  flame.  Her  father  and  mother 
were  gentlefolk,  and  there  was  a  dis- 
tinguished ancestry  behind  them, 
far  and  away.  But  by  what  law  of 


LOUISE   CHANDLER   MOULTON        159 

nature  was  it,  and  from  what  material, 
that  out  of  their  gentle  and  quiet  lives 
sprang  this  child  of  poesy  and  of  bril- 
liant career?  Louise  loved  her  father 
and  mother  devotedly  and  thought  they 
as  good  as  held  up  the  sky.  But  when 
she  went  away  to  boarding-school,  she 
had  emancipation  from  their  beliefs, 
although  not  from  themselves.  When  her 
mother  came  to  see  her,  wearing  pink  roses 
in  her  bonnet,  she  was  delighted,  and  also 
extremely  pleased  to  think  no  other  girl  in 
school  had  such  a  pretty  mother  as  she. 

She  was  a  faithful  student,  and  her 
"compositions"  were  so  remarkable  that 
at  first  a  teacher  thought  she  had  ap- 
propriated them  from  some  successful 
writer,  but  she  was  so  absolutely  truth- 
ful and  frank  that  her  word  was  taken. 
Her  distant  cousin,  Edmund  Clarence 
Stedman,  was  one  of  her  classmates, 
and  so  also  was  Whistler,  and  they  both 
cherished  the  recollection  of  it. 

She   had   already   published   her   first 


160         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

book  when  she  entered  Mrs.  Emma 
Willard's  Academy.  Her  publisher,  Mr. 
Phillips,  of  Phillips  and  Sampson,  said 
she  was  more  fit  to  be  President  of  the 
United  States  than  any  man  he  knew. 
Of  course  it  was  a  preposterous  state- 
ment ;  but  it  shows  how  early  she  threw 
her  spell  over  every  one.  The  book  sold 
to  the  extent  of  twenty  thousand  copies, 
an  immense  sale  in  those  days. 

She  was  exceedingly  pretty  then,  in 
all  the  loveliness  and  freshness  of  girl- 
hood, with  golden-brown  hair,  hazel  eyes, 
and  black  brows  and  lashes,  with  ex- 
quisite coloring,  and  fine  features.  She 
was  not  tall,  but  she  carried  herself  so 
well  that  she  seemed  tall.  It  was  no 
wonder  that  with  this  personality  and 
sweetness  and  sparkle  Mr.  William  TJp- 
ham  Moulton,  the  editor  of  the  paper  in 
which  many  of  her  sketches  had  been  pub- 
lished, should  have  fallen  in  love  with  her 
and  have  married  her  before  she  was 
twenty. 


LOUISE   CHANDLER   MOULTON        161 

He  was  a  man  of  authority,  of  culture 
and  breeding  and  courteous  manners, 
very  fine-looking,  with  black  hair  on  a 
low  Greek  forehead,  and  eyes  as  blue 
as  jewels  and  blazing  with  light, — a 
man  of  great  generosity  and  great 
sense  of  justice.  A  cousin  of  Louise, 
the  mother  of  Mr.  John  Corbin,  de- 
scribed her  as  lingering  a  moment  on  the 
church  porch  in  the  sunset  light,  a 
radiant  being  in  her  bridal  veil,  blushing, 
blooming,  full  of  life  and  joy  and  love. 
Always  the  confiding,  fearless  glance, 
the  antique  line  of  cheek  and  chin,  the 
delightful  smile,  made  a  face  that  no  por- 
trait has  successfully  recorded,  and  which 
tender  consideration  and  grace  of  manner 
accented  to  wonderful  charm. 

Established  in  Boston,  every  one  gave 
her  glad  welcome.  Lowell,  Emerson, 
Doctor  Holmes,  Whittier,  —  who  spoke 
of  the  benediction  of  her  face,  —  all 
were  her  guests.  Longfellow  brought 
her  his  poems  to  read  before  printing; 


162         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

Mrs.  Whitman,  Edgar  Poe's  betrothed 
(she  of  "the  glory  that  was  Greece  and 
the  grandeur  that  was  Rome"),  was  her 
constant  correspondent.  It  was  as  if 
there  were  a  conspiracy  to  make  her 
happy. 

In  this  first  year  of  her  marriage,  her 
novel  "Juno  Clifford"  was  published,  at 
first  anonymously,  and  then  her  stories 
and  poems  began  to  appear  in  the  mag- 
azines of  the  day.  The  next  year  her 
daughter  Florence  was  born;  an  in- 
comparably beautiful  child,  with  spun- 
gold  hair;  and  some  years  later  came  a 
son,  whose  death,  after  five  days  of  life, 
was  a  great  disappointment  and  grief. 

It  was  in  the  first  year  of  her  marriage 
that  Thackeray  came  to  Boston  with 
his  lectures  on  the  Four  Georges.  Mrs. 
Moulton  attended  all  the  lectures,  sit- 
ting very  near  the  platform  (she  was 
nearsighted),  full  of  longing  and  adora- 
tion. At  the  close  of  the  last,  as  he 
left  the  platform,  he  bent  toward  her 


LOUISE    CHANDLER   MOULTON        163 

and  said:  "I  shall  miss  the  kind,  en- 
couraging face  that  has  been  beneath 
me  for  so  many  hours."  She  had  longed 
with  a  full  heart  to  speak  to  him,  but 
perhaps  for  the  first  and  last  time  in 
her  life,  she  was  so  surprised  that  she 
could  not  say  a  word. 

We  had  become  pleasantly  acquainted 
before,  but  in  the  winter  of  1866,  we  saw 
a  great  deal  more  of  each  other.  She 
had  been  married  eleven  years  then, 
was  a  very  beautiful  woman,  and  her 
house  was  a  center  of  hospitality.  She 
was  as  much  interested  in  me  and  in  my 
work  as  she  was  in  herself  and  her  own 
work.  She  was  always  magnanimously 
generous.  In  her  printed  criticisms  she 
seldom  found  fault ;  where  she  could  not 
praise,  she  was  silent,  except  when  trying 
to  help  in  private.  She  was  the  literary 
correspondent  of  the  New  York  Tribune 
for  some  years,  at  an  interesting  period 
of  Boston  life;  at  the  time  the  Radical 
Club  met  at  Mrs.  Sargent's,  and 


164         A   LITTLE   BOOK    OF   FRIENDS 

Alcott,  John  Weiss,  Colonel  Higginson, 
John  Dwight  of  the  Musical  Journal, 
David  Wasson,  Mrs.  Howe,  Mary 
Thatcher,  afterward  Mrs.  Higginson, 
Frank  Sanborn,  Doctor  Bartol,  Samuel 
Longfellow,  and  almost  all  others  of 
note  were  companions.  Her  letters  were 
copied  everywhere  and  extended  her 
reputation  far  and  wide. 

In  1876,  Louise  went  to  Europe.  A 
few  days  in  London  allowed  her  to  see 
the  Queen  open  Parliament  for  the  first 
time  after  the  Prince  Consort's  death, 
and  the  scene  was  to  her  as  pathetic  as 
it  was  splendid.  She  went  then  for  a 
short  stay  in  Paris,  and  to  Rome. 

Rome  was  the  revelation  to  her  of 
her  dreams  of  romance.  It  overpowered 
her  as  if  with  the  hypnotic  influence  of 
all  the  dead  and  gone  past.  She  not 
only  experienced  the  ancient  delight,  but 
entered  into  the  artistic  and  social  mod- 
ern life.  No  one  ever  felt  the  spell  or 
enjoyed  the  beauty  and  melancholy 


LOUISE    CHANDLER   MOULTON        165 

more  than  this  sensitive,  sympathetic 
spirit.  Protestant  though  she  was,  she 
was  touched  to  tears  by  the  benignant 
old  Pope's  blessing,  and  abandoned  her- 
self to  the  Carnival  like  any  child  of 
Italy.  She  returned  to  Rome  later; 
but  in  the  next  year  she  was  in  London, 
having  a  wonderful  season.  At  that 
time,  she  had  taken  but  one  letter  of 
introduction ;  it  was  from  Joaquin  Mil- 
ler to  Lord  Hough  ton.  As  it  proved, 
she  could  not  have  had  a  more  fortunate 
introduction.  All  London,  or  you  might 
say  all  England,  had  been  excited  and 
stirred  over  Joaquin  Miller  not  long 
before.  He  was  the  wild  west,  a  new 
sensation  in  the  hackneyed  life.  He 
had  meant  nothing  of  the  sort.  He 
had  come  to  London,  with  his  little 
paper-bound  book  of  poems,  simply 
to  obtain  recognition  as  a  poet.  Having 
to  cross  London  one  wet  night,  he  had 
tucked  his  trousers  into  his  boots,  and 
when  at  the  house  to  which  he  was  in- 


166         A   LITTLE    BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

vited,  —  his  long  golden  curls  falling 
on  his  shoulders,  —  he  forgot  to  take  the 
trousers  out  of  hiding  and  no  footman 
ventured  to  instruct  him.  He  was  as 
astonished  as  anyone  when  he  discovered 
the  fact,  and  then  he  brazened  it  out. 
He  was  taken  to  drink  tea  with  the 
Queen  by  Dean  and  Lady  Augusta  Stan- 
ley, who  was  a  descendant  of  Robert 
Bruce;  he  visited  Mr.  Gladstone,  at 
Hawarden;  he  was  asked  to  visit  King 
Humbert  in  Italy,  and  invited  every- 
where by  people  of  importance. 

When  Lord  Houghton  opened  that 
letter  of  his,  it  is  not  impossible  that  he 
thought  he  was  to  have  the  woman  of 
the  wild  and  woolly  west  in  hand.  One 
can  judge  of  his  surprise,  then,  when  he 
met  this  beautiful  young  woman,  of 
exquisitely  gracious  manner,  perfectly 
at  ease,  a  thing  of  loveliness  and  charm. 
He  made  a  breakfast  for  her  and  invited 
to  it  the  leaders  of  letters  and  of  art, 
Browning,  Dore,  Swinburne,  Jean  Inge- 


LOUISE   CHANDLER   MOULTON        167 

low,  George  Eliot,  and  many  others.  Lord 
Houghton  had  introduced  a  gentleman 
wearing  gray  clothes,  but  in  so  low  a  voice 
that  she  failed  to  hear  his  name.  After 
returning  to  the  drawing-room,  the  gen- 
tleman in  gray  came  and  sat  beside  her, 
and  she  said  to  him,  "I  understand  Mr. 
Browning  is  here.  Will  you  kindly  tell 
me  which  he  is?"  A  little  puzzled  and 
amused,  he  called  to  some  one  near, 
"Mrs.  Moulton  wants  to  know  which  of 
us  is  Browning."  And  then  with  a  gay 
motion  he  added,  "C'est  moi!"  They 
became  warm  friends,  and  he  often  came 
to  her  for  advice  and  friendliness.  Mrs. 
Bloomfield  Moore  once  invited  her  for 
a  whole  day  with  Browning  to  herself, 
and  she  always  wore  a  ring  Mrs.  Moore 
gave  her  in  memory  of  the  day. 

After  this  there  was  almost  no  one  of 
any  interest  in  England  that  she  did  not 
meet  and  meet  frequently,  the  Rossettis, 
Watts-Dunton,  William  Sharp  of  the 
dual  personality  with  Fiona  McLeod, 


168         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

Mrs.  Clifford,  Madame  Darmesteter, 
Aubrey  de  Vere,  Doctor  Marston,  the 
dramatist,  and  his  son,  Philip  Bourke 
Marston,  in  fact,  every  one  except  Ten- 
nyson. With  him  Lord  Houghton  had 
arranged  a  meeting,  and  Tennyson  had 
waited  a  half  hour,  when  she  was  not 
to  be  found,  being  away  on  some  trivial 
errand.  Later  she  often  visited  Lady 
Ashburton,  of  whose  rumored  engage- 
ment to  Robert  Browning  she  heard 
two  titled  ladies  talking.  One  said,  "  It 
is  impossible!  My  dear,  she  would  be 
declassee." 

Perhaps  Rose  Terry  Cooke's  sympa- 
thy with  Mrs.  Carlyle  would  have  been 
less  had  Lady  Ashburton  told  her,  as 
she  told  Louise,  of  an  occasion  when 
Carlyle  was  reading  some  pages  of  his 
work  to  a  number  of  people  in  her  draw- 
ing-room, descanting  afterwards  so  mar- 
velously  that  every  one  came  to  him 
with  congratulations  except  his  wife. 
Lady  Ashburton  said  to  her,  "Why  don't 


LOUISE   CHANDLER   MOULTON        169 

you  go  up  and  congratulate  him  too? 
A  word  from  you  would  mean  so  much 
more  to  him.  See,  all  these  others  have 
done  so." 

"They  don't  have  to  live  with  him," 
said  Mrs.  Carlyle. 

Every  year  Louise  made  a  long  visit 
at  Durham  House,  the  home  of  Sir 
Bruce  and  Lady  Seton.  When  one  day 
she  took  me  there  to  see  a  collection  of 
modern  paintings,  and  I  told  Sir  Bruce 
that  I  was  going  to  Clovelly,  "Oh,  yes," 
said  he,  "my  cousin  owns  it."  To 
think  of  any  one  awning  Clovelly,  with 
that  wood  overhanging  the  sea,  beautiful 
as  the  forest  of  Broceliande !  But  his 
words  reminded  me  of  Miss  Porter,  who 
when  asked,  in  England,  if  she  had  ever 
seen  Niagara,  nonchalantly  replied,  "We 
own  it." 

While  in  London  that  first  season, 
Louise  published  her  volume  called 
"Swallow -Flights",  which  had  a  suc- 
cess that  surprised  her  and  exceeded 


170         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

her  most  radiant  hope.  "  '  One  Dread, ' 
said  Professor  Meiklejohn,  "might  have 
been  written  by  Sir  Philip  Sidney." 
The  critical  Atheneum  said  the  poems 
exhibited  delicate  and  rare  beauty, 
marked  originality  and  perfection  of 
style,  subtle  and  vivid  imagination,  and 
the  spontaneous  feeling  which  is  the 
crown  of  lyrical  poetry. 

She  had  flattering  notes  from  Browning, 
from  Swinburne,  from  all  the  world,  and 
what  was  especially  pleasing  to  her  was 
that  most  of  the  notices  were  written  by 
those  who  had  never  seen  her.  Pro- 
fessor Meiklejohn,  somewhat  later,  wrote 
her  of  lines  of  "imperishable  beauty" 
in  the  book,  of  a  line  that  Shelley  might 
have  been  proud  of,  of  the  sonnet  "  In 
Time  to  Come  ",  as  one  of  astonishing 
crescendo.  "  You  must  look  for  your  po- 
etic brethren  among  the  noblest  lyrists 
of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  cen- 
turies. Your  insight,  your  subtlety,  your 
delicacy,  your  music,  are  hardly  matched 


LOUISE    CHANDLER   MOULTON        171 

and  certainly  not  surpassed  by  Herrick, 
or  Campion,  or  Carew,  or  Herbert,  or 
Vaughan."  And  Philip  Bourke  Marston 
wrote,  "the  divine  simplicity,  strength, 
and  subtlety,  the  intense,  fragrant,  genu- 
ine individuality  of  her  poems  make 
them  imperishable."  All  this  adulation 
was  marvelous  to  her,  but  it  never  ex- 
cited or  aroused  vanity.  She  hardly 
believed  it. 

Louise's  friendship  with  the  Marstons, 
father,  son,  and  daughters,  gave  her  great 
happiness.  They  were  very  fond  of  her. 
In  the  case  of  Philip,  who  lost  his  eye- 
sight when  three  years  old,  she  became 
eyes  to  the  blind.  "Can  you  fancy 
what  it  is,"  he  said  to  her,  "to  be  just 
walled  in  with  books  which  you  are 
dying  to  read,  and  to  have  them  as 
much  beyond  your  reach  as  if  they  were 
at  the  other  side  of  the  world?"  On 
becoming  his  literary  executor,  after  his 
early  death,  she  brought  out  a  volume 
of  his  verse  called  "A  Last  Harvest", 


172         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

and  put  together  all  his  flower-poems,  as 
he  had  meant  to  do  himself,  with  the 
title  "Garden  Secrets."  Then  she  pub- 
lished a  collected  edition,  besides  a  book 
of  the  poems  of  Arthur  O'Shaughnessy, 
who  married  one  of  Philip's  sisters,  and 
had  died  early.  Another  sister,  Cecily, 
while  calling  on  Louise  one  day,  died 
suddenly,  almost  in  her  arms.  "It  must 
be  a  comfort  to  thee,"  wrote  Mr.  Whittier, 
"to  know  that  thy  love  and  sympathy 
made  his  sad  lot  easier  to  be  borne.  He 
was  one  who  needed  love,  and  I  think 
he  was  one  to  inspire  it  also."  Edmond 
Gosse  wrote  her  that  she  had  been 
Philip's  better  genius. 

She  went  with  the  Marstons  to 
Etretat,  and  a  passage  in  her  diary, 
recording  the  magnificence  of1  a  wild 
moonlit  night,  shows  how  susceptible 
she  was  to  the  great  influences  of  nature. 
"Nothing  can  ever  take  from  me  the 
fitful  splendor,  the  wild  rhythm,  the 
divine  mystery  of  this  happy  night.  I 


LOUISE   CHANDLER   MOULTON        173 

can  always  close  my  eyes  and  see  again 
sea  and  sky  and  dear  faces ;  hear  again 
the  waves  break  on  this  wild  coast  of 
Normandy  with  the  passion  of  their 
immortal  pain  and  longing." 

Louise  often  went  back  to  Europe, 
and  her  spacious  rooms  in  London  were 
filled  with  a  delightful  company.  One 
met  there  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Meynell,  Thomas 
Hardy,  Mrs.  Cashel-Hoey,  Burne-Jones, 
Watts-Dunton,  and  other  most  interest- 
ing folk.  At  home  in  the  winter  her 
Friday  afternoons  became  a  feature  of 
Boston  society ;  her  drawing-room  and 
library  were  filled  with  painting  and 
sculpture  given  by  the  painters  and 
sculptors,  of  old  china,  autographs,  and 
books.  The  doors  of  her  house  were 
open  to  all,  and  she  was  a  gracious  and 
perfect  hostess. 

In  another  European  visit  she  was  in 
Italy,  visiting  Capri,  Sorrento,  Amalfi, 
Psestum;  and  then  in  Rome  again. 
She  went  to  the  various  Baths  from  time 


174         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

to  time, published  her  little  book  of  "Ran- 
dom Rambles."  She  traveled  through 
Spain  with  friends,  and  her  "Lazy  Tours" 
is  a  record  of  all  she  felt  in  that  land 
"whose  gayety  is  the  foam  on  an  ocean 
of  sad  history,"  as  Colonel  Higginson 
has  said. 

In  the  late  eighties,  she  sent  a  lit- 
erary letter  every  week  to  the  Boston 
Herald,  and  the  letters  were  as  successful 
as  those  she  sent  years  before  to  the 
Tribune;  in  1889  she  published  her 
"Garden  of  Dreams",  exquisitely  il- 
lustrated. This  carried  her  reputation 
still  higher,  going  through  several  edi- 
tions. One  of  the  sonnets,  the  pro- 
foundly touching  "Help  Thou  my  Un- 
belief", gained  a  wide  recognition,  and 
all  the  verses  received  warm  praise. 
George  Meredith  wrote  her  that  her 
lyrics  were  exquisite.  Miss  Cooper  — 
of  the  Michael  Field  partnership  —  said 
"  your  verses  are  like  music,"  and  Whit- 
tier  wrote  her  that  "the  sonnet  was 


LOUISE   CHANDLER   MOULTON        175 

never  set  to  such  music  and  never 
weighted  with  more  deep  and  tender 
thought." 

After  Mr.  Moulton's  death  in  1898, 
Louise  remained  at  home  and  in  seclu- 
sion for  more  than  two  years,  in  the 
home  that  sadly  missed  his  presence. 
He  was  a  very  noble  man,  of  perfect 
integrity,  generous  and  sympathetic,  of 
fine  intelligence;  he  had  always  made 
her  travel  and  social  life  possible,  and 
had  been  gratified  by  her  successes. 
He  was  in  his  usual  health  when  she  was 
to  read  "A  Toccata  of  Galuppi's",  at  a 
meeting  of  the  Browning  Society,  and 
she  writes  in  her  diary,  "Mr.  Moulton 
seemed  interested  about  the  reading, 
and  I  read  him  the  *  Toccata '  and  other 
poems.  A  beautiful  evening."  It  was 
the  last  evening  of  Mr.  Moulton's  good 
health.  He  was  ill  the  next  day,  and 
died  very  shortly  afterward. 

The  spring  of  1900  she  passed  in  Italy, 
where  all  was  soothing  and  helpful,  and 


176         A   LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

again  the  enchantment  overcame  her; 
then  she  was  in  London  with  old  friends ; 
by  September  she  was  in  Paris  for  the 
Exposition,  and  then  to  Aix-le-Bains,  her 
health  having  become  uncertain. 

For  some  time  her  yearly  seasons  in 
London,  and  sojourns  on  the  Continent 
were  a  series  of  triumphal  progresses. 
She  had  innumerable  invitations,  and 
went  out  a  great  deal,  —  to  Edward 
Clifford's  to  see  pictures,  to  lunch  with 
Sir  Richard  and  Lady  Burton  at  Hamp- 
stead  Heath,  to  Mrs.  Meynell's,  Arch- 
deacon Wilberforce's,  the  Baroness  Bur- 
det-Coutts's,  sought  after  indeed  by  all. 
It  was  the  more  pleasant  because  she 
never  was  willing  to  seek  social  distinc- 
tion, and  declined  to  be  presented  at 
court  when  friends  urged  it.  She  had 
one  disastrous  experience  at  this  time, 
which  always  gave  her  regret ;  she  had 
accepted  an  invitation  to  a  luncheon  as 
the  guest  of  honor,  but  had  failed  to 
make  a  note  of  it,  and  on  looking  for 


LOUISE   CHANDLER   MOTJLTON        177 

the  invitation  to  see  the  address  found 
she  had  mislaid  it.  After  long  search, 
the  maid  was  summoned;  but  she  had 
emptied  the  waste-basket,  and  the  con- 
tents had  been  taken  away.  It  was 
impossible  for  Mrs.  Moulton  to  remem- 
ber the  name,  the  place,  or  the  hour ;  and 
she  felt  bitterly  that  her  failing  memory 
would  cast  a  blight  upon  the  character 
of  the  manners  of  American  women. 

In  1900  her  last  book,  "At  the  Wind's 
Will",  was  published.  Almost  all  of  it 
was  poetry  at  high-water  mark  and 
exceeded  all  she  had  done  before.  Her 
health  had  failed  her  so  treacherously, 
and  her  friends  and  her  letters  so  ab- 
sorbed her  attention,  that  she  wrote 
very  little  more. 

It  has  been  said  that  she  had  a  genius 
for  friendship.  She  never  had  a  friend 
that  she  did  not  try  to  share  that  friend 
with  some  one  she  loved.  As  Mrs. 
Annie  Eichberg  King  wrote  of  her,  "It 
was  a  part  of  her  to  be  happy  in  another's 


178         A   LITTLE    BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

happiness."  She  had  great  enjoyment 
in  the  friendship  of  Mr.  Coulson  Kerni- 
han  —  of  whose  book  "God  and  the 
Ant"  a  million  copies  were  sold  —  and 
who,  when  she  was  in  London,  surrounded 
her  with  every  care  and  attention.  She 
also  had  great  pleasure  in  the  friendship  of 
Mr.  Arlo  Bates,  of  Edmund  Stedman,  of 
William  Winter,  of  Doctor  Ames,  of  Lilian 
Whiting,  Julia  Ward  Howe,  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Royal  Cortizzos,  the  Pearmains,  Imogen 
Guiney,  Alice  Brown,  and  too  many  others 
to  enumerate.  "My  best  reward,"  she 
said  once,  "has  been  the  friendships  that 
my  slight  work  has  won  for  me."  Letters 
of  friendship  came  to  her  from  all  over 
the  world,  and  until  the  very  last  she 
answered  them.  She  was  always  care- 
ful of  the  feelings  of  others;  and  her 
generosity  in  other  ways  was  boundless. 
No  one  ever  asked  her  for  help  of  any 
sort,  that  she  did  not  give  it,  —  re- 
vision of  manuscript,  letters  of  intro- 
duction, money  in  large  sums.  She 


LOUISE   CHANDLER   MOULTON        179 

was  equally  generous  in  her  apprecia- 
tions and  in  extending  the  reputation 
of  another.  With  two  exceptions  she 
was  the  most  absolutely  generous  per- 
son I  have  ever  known. 

For  many  years  she  read  frequently 
in  public  for  charities  and  institutions. 
She  was  a  wonderful  reader;  her  ex- 
quisite voice,  full  of  silver  vibrations,  — 
that  "voice  in  which  all  sweetnesses 
abide"  as  Philip  Bourke  Marston  said, — 
seemed  to  give  meanings  that  perhaps 
were  in  the  writer's  sub-consciousness  but 
not  in  the  verse,  and  when  she  read  her 
own  poetry,  the  lutes  and  flutes  of  Fra 
Angelico's  angels  could  not  have  given 
sweeter  accord.  Once  when  in  some 
company  Mr.  Whittier  was  asked  to 
read  one  of  his  poems,  a  thing  impossible 
to  him,  he  said  he  would  like  to  hear 
her  read  one;  and  she  read  "The  Swan 
Song  of  Parson  A  very. "  The  poet  went 
over  to  her  and  said,  "Why,  thee  has 
made  me  think  I've  written  a  beautiful 


180         A    LITTLE   BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

poem ! "  It  was  only  two  days  before 
she  died  that  she  repeated  to  me  one  of 
her  own  verses, 

"Roses  that  briefly  live, 

Joy  be  your  dower, 
Blest  be  the  fates  that  give 

One  perfect  hour. 
For  though  too  soon  you  die, 

In  your  dust  glows 
Something  the  passer-by 

Knows  was  a  rose  !" 

and  all  the  old  richness  and  fullness 
and  undertone  of  melancholy  were  in  her 
soft  murmur. 

She  had  a  year  of  suffering,  tenderly 
cared  for  by  her  faithful  Katy.  Her 
daughter  Florence,  with  her  husband, 
Mr.  Schaefer,  abandoned  other  plans  and 
came  to  Boston,  passing  many  months 
with  her,  and  being  a  great  comfort 
and  delight.  Her  memory  failed  in  some 
directions,  that  is,  as  to  the  affairs  of 
to-day  and  yesterday,  but  on  literary 
matters  it  was  as  good  as  ever.  I  was 


LOUISE   CHANDLER   MOULTON        181 

with  her  a  great  deal  at  that  time,  and 
two  days  before  she  died  I  read  to  her  in 
the  morning  various  poems  new  and  old, 
and  she  spoke  here  critically,  there  ad- 
miringly, with  all  her  former  keen  ap- 
preciation. 

She  passed  into  the  future  life  as  one 
goes  to  sleep.  And  she  was  as  beautiful 
in  death  as  in  life,  as  she  lay  almost 
buried  in  flowers.  The  great,  wide- 
winged  golden  butterfly  that  flew  be- 
fore, as  she  was  carried  out  of  the  house, 
was  only  a  symbol  of  her  spirit.  Lilian 
Whiting  noted  this  occurrence,  in  her 
full  and  fine  biography  of  Louise,  wherein 
she  has  shown  how  well  all  love  and 
admiration  were  justified. 

There  was  found  in  Louise's  desk  a 
memorandum  on  which  was  written  a 
list  of  various  things  which  she  would 
like  to  have  her  daughter  do  for  certain 
charities  and  friends.  The  paper  was 
undated  and  unsigned ;  but  her  daughter 
understood  that  it  was  her  mother's 


182         A   LITTLE    BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

wish  and  observed  it  in  every  particular. 
One  of  the  wishes  was  that  a  handsome 
annuity  should  be  given  me,  which  has 
always  been  kindly  done,  and  has  been 
doubly  valued. 

It  was  an  unusual  thing  that  Louise 
herself  never  wrote  any  account  of  her 
flattering  experiences  abroad,  except  in 
the  brief  notes  of  her  diary.  She  never 
in  any  instance  violated  the  sacredness 
of  the  homes  that  received  her,  or  in- 
troduced in  her  public  letters,  incidents, 
allusions,  descriptions,  that  would  have 
been  interesting  reading,  but  which  she 
felt  it  would  be  indelicate  to  relate. 
But  in  the  privacy  of  friendly  meetings 
she  sometimes  spoke  freely.  I  remember 
once  at  a  luncheon  that  Mrs.  Fields  gave 
her,  how  delightful  she  was,  illumining 
the  whole  occasion  with  account  of 
those  of  whom  we  were  glad  to  hear. 
But  even  then  she  told  only  what  was 
good  and  best.  She  could  have  right- 
eous indignation  with  wrongdoing;  but 


LOUISE   CHANDLER   MOULTON        183 

I   never   heard   her   speak    unkindly   or 
derisively  of  any  individual. 

Although  many  of  her  lyrics,  such  as 
"The  House  of  Death"  and  "Arcady" 
are,  I  think,  immortal,  yet  it  must  be  by 
her  sonnets  that  she  will  be  most  truly 
known.  "Though  we  were  Dust",  with 
its  passionate  outcry,  the  heart-breaking 
"Rose  of  Dawn",  the  large  and  splendid 
yet  tenderly  touching  "Were  but  My 
Spirit  loosed  upon  the  Air  ",  the  intense 
humanity  of  "Vain  Freedom",  the  tre- 
mendous yearning  and  prayer  of  "Help 
Thou  my  Unbelief",  the  sympathetic 
touch  of  "A  Poet's  Second  Love",  the 
magnificence  of  "When  we  confront  the 
Vastness  of  the  Night",  the  lofty  insight 
of  "Aspiration",  place  all  these  sonnets 
among  the  greatest  that  have  enriched 
our  literature.  She  sometimes  regretted 
what  she  called  her  narrow  range,  since 
most  of  her  poems  treated  only  of  love 
and  death.  But  is  there  anything  greater 
and  broader  in  all  the  world !  And  yet 


184        A    LITTLE    BOOK   OF   FRIENDS 

her  genius  was  less  than  the  loveliness  of 
nature,  the  kindness,  the  sweetness,  the 
capability  for  affection,  the  forgiving- 
ness,  the  single-mindedness,  the  magna- 
nimity and  nobility  that  made  her  true 
lover  and  matchless  friend. 


THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  SANTA  CRUZ 


This  book  is  due  on  the  last  DATE  stamped  below. 


JAN    6  o2 

JAN    41982R£C'D 


AUG  1 V85      M 


AUG  a  \>  1985 

UC  SANTA  CRUZ 

INTERUBRARYIOAN 

SEP  10  1985111'! 

AUG  2  3  '88 

DUE 

SEP  09  1988 


UC  SANTA  CRUZ 
MflHMUIIVlOAN 

'  1  2  1988  REC'O 


50m-l,'69(J5643s8)2373 — 3A,1 


SEPO 
If-*" 


aa: 


AUG  EE -1991  REB'l 


PS151.S7 


3  2106  00204  7212 


